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Celebrating our 22nd year of service to
the worldwide amateur radio community, we

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are This Week in Amateur Radio.

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You are all amateur radio and technology news

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magazine and bulletin service of the air.

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This is edition number 1144, the first in
our 22nd year of service with a release

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and air date of Saturday, January 30th, 2021.

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Please take the program to
your air following the Q-Tone.

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With this edition of This Week in Amateur
Radio, we are officially celebrating

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our 22nd year of service to the
amateur radio community worldwide.

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We are This Week in Amateur Radio,
North America's premier amateur radio and

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technology news magazine and
bulletin service of the air.

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Here are the stories for release around
the earth as we come to air with edition

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number 1144,
the beginning of our 22nd year of This Week

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in Amateur Radio.

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President Joseph Biden taps Commissioner
Jessica Rosenwursel as acting FCC chair.

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Ham Radio's Suitsat returns in a
short science fiction horror film

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called Decommissioned.

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The QSO Today virtual ham exposition
will include a speaker track on

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working amateur radio satellites.

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The Orlando Hamcation online event and
QSO party is set alongside the Orlando

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virtual hamcation all happening very soon.

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Over the horizon, radars continue to
clutter up the 40 and 20 meter bands.

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Aeris and partners are investigating
the failure of the space

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station amateur radio system.

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Germany's Friedrichshavn
Hamfest plans to take place

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within pandemic restrictions.

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And a popular television series featuring
amateur radio is preparing to go

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QRT, the ham radio way.

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You're going to want to take some notes.

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We will have the story in this week's report.

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These headline stories will come
to you in a moment along with

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this week's special features.

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We'll visit with Bruce Page, KK5DO,
and get an update from AMSAT and see what's

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new with all of those
amateur satellites in orbit.

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Our technology reporter, Leo Laporte,
W6TWT, talks about bringing back forums.

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Leo also will tell us how Google is in the
process of shutting down its wide area

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ISP experiment called Project Loon.

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And he will tell us about a railroad system
in northern China that is running on

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the now expired Adobe Flash.

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Australia's own Anil Ben-Shap, VK6FLAB,
will introduce us to the Vagabond Ham.

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Our own amateur radio historian,
Bill Cantinelli, W2XOY returns with another

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edition of the Ancient Amateur Archives.

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This week,
Bill takes us back to November 15, 1945.

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That's the date that radio silence
was lifted and amateurs were

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allowed back on the air.

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Well, sort of.

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And our tower climbing and antenna master,
Greg Stoddard, KF9MP, will present

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part 4 of his 6-part series on writing
and producing a written public service

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announcement to promote your next club
event and to successfully get it on the

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air on local broadcast radio stations.

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And courtesy of Eric Guth, Forzid1UG,
and the QSO Today podcast team, we will

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have a complete interview with former
FCC official, Ralph Haller, and 4RH.

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All that and a lot more is straight
ahead as North America's premier amateur

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radio and technology news magazine
and bulletin service this week

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in amateur radio.

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Takes to the air right now.

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Reporting from our headquarters studio
here in beautiful downtown Albany, New

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York, where it definitely has been a
three-dog night for the past few days, I'm

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George W2XBS.

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And reporting from our news bureau in
downtown Syracuse, New York from Armory

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Square, I'm Chris Perrine, KB2FAF.

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And reporting from ice station Zebra in
the Catskill Mountains of New York, where

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the temperature barely crawled above zero
degrees today, I'm Don Hulick, K2ATJ.

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And reporting from our news bureau in Troy,
New York beneath a four-inch layer of

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new snow, I'm Eric, KD2RJX.

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And from Studio 1 of our central Florida
news bureau, where this week in amateur

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radio celebrates 22 years of service
to the amateur community, I'm Fred

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Fitty, November Fox, 2 Fox.

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And reporting from our news bureau in
Fayetteville, Arkansas, where the weather

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can't make up its bloomin'
mind, I'm Will Rogers, K5WLR.

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And now, to start our 22nd year of service
to the amateur radio community, here's

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our lead anchor this week,
Chris Perrine, KB2FAF.

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Chris?

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Leading off this week's news,
President Joseph Biden this week designated FCC

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Commissioner Jessica
Rosenworsal as acting chair of

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the Federal Communications Commission.

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With more details on this important
appointment, we go to Rick Lindquist, WW1ME,

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who files this report from League
Headquarters in Newington.

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President Joseph Biden has tapped FCC
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworsal as

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acting chair of the FCC.

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She succeeds, at least temporarily,
former FCC Chair Ajit Pai, who resigned

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effective on January 20th.

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Rosenworsal, who's been on the FCC for
about eight years now, said she was

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honored to be designated as the acting
chairwoman, and she thanked the president

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for the opportunity to, as she put it,
lead an agency with such a vital mission

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and talented staff.

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Three other commissioners, Nathan Symington,
Jeffrey Starks, and Brendan Carr,

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all had words of praise for the temporary
appointment, although Rosenworsal could

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get the permanent nod as chair.

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Rosenworsal went on to say that it is a
privilege to serve the American people

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and work on their behalf to expand the
reach of communications opportunity

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in the digital age.

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Prior to joining the FCC, she served as
Senior Communications Counsel for the

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United States Senate Committee on Commerce,
Science, and Transportation.

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Before entering public service,
she practiced communications law

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in Washington, D.C.

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The newest FCC Commissioner, Nathan Symington,
a Republican appointee, said

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Rosenworsal brings deep knowledge and
experience and highly informed judgment to

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her new position, and he expressed
appreciation that the Biden administration

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acted promptly to establish FCC leadership
by selecting such a distinguished

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public servant for this vital role.

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Fellow Democrat, Jeffrey Starks,
said Rosenworsal has been a passionate advocate

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for bringing the benefits of broadband to all

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Americans, particularly our children.

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He said her designation as acting chair
comes at a critical juncture for the

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Commission, as the pandemic has made
bold action to end internet inequality

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more vital than ever.

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The Commission's other Democratic appointee,
Brendan Carr, called Rosenworsal a

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talented and dedicated public servant
as evidenced by her eight years of

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distinguished service at the FCC.

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On Twitter, Rosenworsal said,
the future belongs to the connected, and she

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described herself as an important optimist,
mom, wife, and an

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inveterate coffee drinker.

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Now celebrating our 22nd year keeping the
amateur radio community informed, you

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are listening to This Week in Amateur Radio,
available worldwide as a podcast

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from our web at www.twir.net.

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Suitset 1 loses its innocence in a new
video short sci-fi thriller entitled

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Decommissioned.

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Inspired by true events, the video
short resurrects the 2006 spacesuit and

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satellite that transmitted messages
on two meters as it circled Earth.

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The original spacesuit 1 project,
conceived by an amateur radio on the

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International Space Station team,
repurposed a decommissioned Russian Orland

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spacesuit to function as a free-floating
amateur radio transmit-only satellite.

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ARIS designed and built an antenna
and radio gear that got approved for

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installation into the suit, and cosmonaut
Valeriy Torkarev and Commander Bill

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MacArthur KC-5ACR put Suitset 1 into
orbit at the start of a spacewalk,

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ARIS-US delegate for ARRL
Rosalie White K1STO recounted.

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Suitset 1 transmitted a voice message.

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This is Suitset 1 RS0RS in several languages,
plus telemetry and

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a slow-scan TV image on an eight-minute
cycle as it orbited Earth.

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In the six-minute film, a Suitset returns
in the future to haunt International

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Space Station commander Dias,
played by Joy Vieira.

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Dias is seen taking photos from inside
an observation dome on the ISS when he

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spies some distant space debris and
radios Houston to express concern.

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If there was any cause for alarm,
you know we'd see it too, Houston assures.

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As the object closes in,
an increasingly anxious Dias recognizes the

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debris as Suitset.

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This is Suitset,
comes a voice on the ham radio.

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Houston, you're not going to believe this.

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We're picking up transmissions on the
ham radio that sound identical to the

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Suitset experiment,
he tells a skeptical mission control.

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It's Suitset!

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I'm seeing Suitset!

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Suitset re-entered the
atmosphere and burned up years

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ago, mission control responds.

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It's impossible, he is told.

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Decommission was produced by Perception
Pictures and directed by Australian

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filmmaker Josh Tanner.

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He told Gizmodo that he produced the
video using the Unreal Engine technology

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that the Mandalorian used, albeit old-school
rear projection as opposed to the

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fancy LED wall tech they used.

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Suitset 1, called Radioskaaf or Radiosputnik
in Russian, was so successful that

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another unneeded Orland spacesuit was
subsequently refitted as Suitset 2.

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As an interesting sidebar with respect
to the real Suitset, White explained,

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after the ARIS engineers calculated
Suitset's 1 orbit and spin characteristics,

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they knew the legs and arms would have to
be filled with something, so they asked

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the crew to stuff dirty laundry inside.

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White said decommission was a
hit at a recent ARIS meeting.

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The original Suitsets were de-orbited
to burn up in Earth's atmosphere after

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their useful lives ended.

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ARRL is a partner in the ARIS program,
which has kept amateur radio on the air

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from the International
Space Station for 20 years.

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A hallmark of the ARIS program is the
scheduled ham radio contacts made by

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astronaut crew members with schools
and student groups around the world.

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Some of you might not be old enough to
remember Suitset from the early 2000s, but

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it was a Russian spacesuit
that was equipped with a radio

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transmitter to transmit on 2 meters.

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Anyway, Suitset makes an appearance in a
new video short sci-fi thriller called

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Decommissioned, inspired by Troy Vence,
the video short resurrects the 2006

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spacesuit satellite that transmitted
messages on 2 meters as it circled Earth.

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00:12:16,000 --> 00:12:19,001
The original Suitset 1 project,
conceived by an amateur radio on the

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International Space Station team,
repurposed a decommissioned Russian-Orland

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spacesuit to function as a free-floating
amateur radio transmit-only

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satellite, transmitting a voice message.

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This is Suitset 1 RS-0RS.

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In the 6-minute film, Suitset returns in
the future to haunt International Space

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Station Commander Diaz, played by Joey Vieira.

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Diaz is seen taking photos from inside
an observation dome on the ISS when he

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spies some distant space debris and
radios Houston to express concern.

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Houston, you're not going to believe this.

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The picking of transmissions on
the head were any other side

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identical to the Suitset experiment.

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In that debris, it's an Orland space [...]

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I'm not sure I'm hearing you right.

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Repeat that, Commander.

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Suitset.

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I'm seeing Suitset.

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You're mistaken, Diaz.

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Decommissioned was produced by Perception
Pictures and directed by Australian

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filmmaker Josh Tanner.

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You can get a link to the video on our website,
www.arrl.org.

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Look for the story, Ham Radio's
Suitset returns in short horror film.

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The QSO Today virtual ham expo on March
13th and 14th will devote a speaker track

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to AMSAT and the world of
amateur radio satellites.

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For more details on the lineup of
presenters at the ham expo, we go to Rick

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Lindquist, WW1ME,
who files this report from League Headquarters.

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The expo is in full planning mode and
promises many exciting new things for the

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upcoming event, which will include a
world-class lineup of more than 60 speakers

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and workshops for beginners to experts.

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Presenters at nine AMSAT sessions will
discuss the broad spectrum of ham radio

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satellites, including introduction to
amateur radio satellites, getting on the

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air with satellites, how to enjoy amateur
radio contacts with the International

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Space Station,
and debris mitigation in Earth's orbit.

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00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:38,001
Michelle Thompson, W5NYV, an AMSAT board
member, said working with satellites is

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one of the most rewarding
privileges of holding a ham ticket.

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There has never been a better time to be
involved in amateur radio satellites,

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she said, since some long-standing
regulatory burdens have been lifted and

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advanced technology has never been
more affordable and accessible.

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We have opportunities now that weren't
available even a few years ago.

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AMSAT is fortunate to contribute to the
expo by showcasing the truly amazing work

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going on around the world in amateur radio
satellites, and the expo is the ideal

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partner to show it off to
the wider ham audience.

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AMSAT will have a booth at the expo
where attendees can talk to experts,

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enthusiasts, operators and technicians,
and obtain contact and membership

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information for the 30 AMSAT
societies around the world.

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Early bird tickets are
$10 to help cover the cost of the event

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and $12.50 at the door.

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That includes entry to the live two-day
event as well as access during the 30-day

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on-demand period following the event.

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Register on the QSO Today
virtual ham expo website.

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The Orlando Hamcation has announced it
will sponsor the Hamcation QSO party over

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the February 13th and 14th weekend UTC
to create a fun way for amateurs to

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celebrate the Orlando Hamcation
experience over the air.

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00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:03,000
Hamcation QSO party will be a
12-hour event on Hamcation weekend.

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00:16:03,001 --> 00:16:08,001
Hamcation 2021 was to host the ADRL
National Convention which will now

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00:16:08,001 --> 00:16:10,000
take place in 2022.

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00:16:10,001 --> 00:16:15,000
The QSO party will replicate the camaraderie
and social experience of attending

228
00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:20,001
Hamcation and provide a way to have fun
on the radio since Hamcation 2021 will

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00:16:20,001 --> 00:16:25,000
not be held due to COVID-19,
the Hamcation QSL party committee said.

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00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:31,001
The Hamcation QSO party will run
from 1500 UTC on February 13th until

231
00:16:31,001 --> 00:16:35,000
0300 UTC on February 14th.

232
00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:39,001
It will be a CWN single sideband
operating event on 80, 40,

233
00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:42,000
20, 15 and 10 meters.

234
00:16:43,000 --> 00:16:45,000
Any station may work any other station.

235
00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:50,001
Categories will be high power, more than
100 watts output, low power, 100 watts

236
00:16:50,001 --> 00:16:55,001
output or less, but greater than 5
watts and QRP 5 watts output or less.

237
00:16:57,000 --> 00:16:59,000
All participants will be single operators.

238
00:16:59,001 --> 00:17:01,000
There is no multi-operator category.

239
00:17:01,001 --> 00:17:05,001
The exchange will be your name,
state, province, country and the

240
00:17:05,001 --> 00:17:07,000
outside temperature at your location.

241
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:12,001
We are including temperature at your
QTH as a way to highlighting Orlando's

242
00:17:12,001 --> 00:17:14,000
mid-February weather, the committee said.

243
00:17:14,001 --> 00:17:19,001
Nine Hamcation special event stations
with one by one call signs will be on the

244
00:17:19,001 --> 00:17:22,000
air with combined suffix
spelling out Hamcation.

245
00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:26,001
Each contact will count as one
point and stations may be worked

246
00:17:26,001 --> 00:17:28,000
once on each band and mode.

247
00:17:29,000 --> 00:17:33,001
Entrance will report their scores on the www.
3830scores.com.

248
00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:35,000
No logs are required.

249
00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:39,000
Final results will be based on the
information submitted to the website.

250
00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:42,000
Station guest operators
must use their own calls

251
00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:44,000
and submit their scores individually.

252
00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:47,000
Plaques and certificates will be awarded.

253
00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:53,000
Meanwhile, the Orlando Hamcation special
edition online event over February 13th

254
00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:57,000
and 14th weekend will take place at
what would have been Hamcation 2021

255
00:17:57,000 --> 00:17:58,001
in-person show.

256
00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:01,001
The online event will include youth technology

257
00:18:01,001 --> 00:18:03,001
contesting and vendor webinar tracks.

258
00:18:04,001 --> 00:18:09,000
The A.R.L. will also prevent two
webinars on Saturday, February 13th.

259
00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:16,000
They are the A.R.L. Member Forum at 1 p.
m. EST, moderated by A.R.L. SE

260
00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:21,001
division director Mickey Baker, N4MB,
amateur radio emergency service

261
00:18:21,001 --> 00:18:28,000
presentation at 3 p.m. EST, moderated by A.
R.L. director of emergency management

262
00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,001
Paul Gilbert, KE5ZW.

263
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:34,000
The Aries presentation will include
panelists from the A.R.L. section

264
00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:36,000
emergency coordinators in Florida.

265
00:18:36,001 --> 00:18:39,001
Live online prize drawings are also
scheduled during the Hamcation

266
00:18:39,001 --> 00:18:41,001
special edition online event.

267
00:18:41,001 --> 00:18:46,001
You are listening to This Week in Amateur
Radio, available as a podcast at our

268
00:18:46,001 --> 00:18:53,000
website, www.twir.
net, and streamed worldwide via

269
00:18:53,000 --> 00:18:55,000
Spotify and iHeartMedia.

270
00:19:15,001 --> 00:19:20,000
The Over the Horizon Radars reports
that Over the Horizon Radars have

271
00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:24,000
increasingly been finding
spectrum on 17 and 15 meters.

272
00:19:24,001 --> 00:19:29,000
Above all, the Russian Over the Horizon Radar,
known as Container, as well as

273
00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:33,001
Over the Horizon Radars from China,
continue to affect amateur radio more and

274
00:19:33,001 --> 00:19:38,000
more, sometimes quite massively,
said Over the Horizon Radars newsletter editor

275
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:45,000
Peter Jost, HB9 CET in the December edition,
with three or four such signals

276
00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:46,001
showing in the same band.

277
00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:51,001
Significantly fewer FSK transmissions,
as well as the characteristic CIS-12

278
00:19:51,001 --> 00:19:55,000
signals from the Commonwealth of
Independent States, were to be found.

279
00:19:55,000 --> 00:20:02,000
For some time now, a broadcast station
is active every day at 1100-1258 UTC

280
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:08,000
at 7200 kHz, just said, adding that the
signal appears to be coming from Taiwan.

281
00:20:08,001 --> 00:20:13,001
The broadcast station, voice of broad
masses from Eritrea, can be heard daily on

282
00:20:13,001 --> 00:20:19,000
7140 kHz and increasingly also on 7180 kHz,
he added.

283
00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:23,001
Occasionally, better conditions during
November 2020 revealed phishing voice

284
00:20:23,001 --> 00:20:27,000
signals and an Iranian Over the
Horizon Radars on 10 meters.

285
00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:32,001
The Chinese Over the Horizon Radar,
nicknamed FOGHORN, was and is a daily

286
00:20:32,001 --> 00:20:35,000
troublemaker, Jost reported, back in November.

287
00:20:35,001 --> 00:20:40,000
Amateur radio on the International Space
Station, or ARIS, and its partners are

288
00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:45,001
troubleshooting a failure with the
onboard NA-1SS amateur station in the

289
00:20:45,001 --> 00:20:47,000
ISS Columbus module.

290
00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:52,000
The problem does not appear to be
with the radio equipment in Columbus.

291
00:20:52,001 --> 00:20:56,001
However, ARIS realized the problem when
a contact with a school in Wyoming

292
00:20:56,001 --> 00:21:03,000
between ON-4 ISS on Earth and
astronaut Mike Hopkins, KF-5LJG,

293
00:21:03,001 --> 00:21:08,000
at NA-1SS had to abort when
no downlink signal was heard.

294
00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:11,000
Today was a tough one for ARIS.

295
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:17,000
ARIS International Chair Frank Bauer,
KA3HTO, began in a message on January

296
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:19,000
28 to the ARIS team.

297
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:25,001
Bauer explained that during a January 27
spacewalk to install exterior cabling on

298
00:21:25,001 --> 00:21:31,000
the ISS Columbus module, the current
COACS feedline installed 11 years ago was

299
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:35,001
replaced with another built by a
European space agency and Airbus.

300
00:21:35,001 --> 00:21:40,001
It included two additional RF connectors
to support the commissioning of the

301
00:21:40,001 --> 00:21:45,001
Bartolomeo payload hosting platform
installed last spring on Columbus.

302
00:21:46,001 --> 00:21:52,000
On January 26, prior to the extravehicular
activity, our Columbus Next Generation

303
00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:57,000
radio system was shut off and the ISS
International coaxial cable to the antenna

304
00:21:57,000 --> 00:22:01,001
was disconnected from the ARIS
radio as a safety precaution for

305
00:22:01,001 --> 00:22:03,000
the EVA, Bauer said.

306
00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:08,001
During the spacewalk, an external
four-connector COACS feedline replaced one

307
00:22:08,001 --> 00:22:10,001
with two RF connectors.

308
00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:15,001
The change was made to allow the European
space agency to connect ARIS and three

309
00:22:15,001 --> 00:22:21,000
additional customers to Bartolomeo as
compared to ARIS and one additional

310
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:23,000
RF customer, Bauer explained.

311
00:22:23,001 --> 00:22:29,000
With the spacewalk completed, the ISS crew
restarted the ISS ham radio station on

312
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:33,001
January 28, but no voice repeater
or automatic packet repeater system

313
00:22:33,001 --> 00:22:35,001
downlink reports were heard.

314
00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:42,000
During a scheduled school contact at 1746 UTC,
no downlink single was heard

315
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:45,001
either,
and attempted contact had to be terminated.

316
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:49,001
Clearly, there is an issue, Bauer continued.
More

317
00:22:49,001 --> 00:22:51,000
troubleshooting will be required.

318
00:22:51,001 --> 00:22:56,001
It may be the new external RF cable that
was installed during yesterday's EVA.

319
00:22:56,001 --> 00:23:00,001
It might also have been caused by
the connect and disconnect of the

320
00:23:00,001 --> 00:23:02,001
interior coaxial RF cable.

321
00:23:03,001 --> 00:23:06,001
So the interior cable cannot be
totally discounted just yet.

322
00:23:07,001 --> 00:23:11,001
Bauer said the crew photographed the
coaxial cable and connector attached to the

323
00:23:11,001 --> 00:23:13,000
ARIS radio inside the ISS.

324
00:23:13,001 --> 00:23:19,000
Because the exterior cable is a Bartolomeo
cable and not an ARIS cable, we are

325
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:23,000
working with ESA and NASA on a way forward,
he said.

326
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:27,001
NASA has opened a payload
anomaly report on the issue.

327
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:32,000
We have talked to both the NASA and
European Space Agency representatives.

328
00:23:32,001 --> 00:23:39,000
Bauer said ARIS has asked the Russian team
leader, Sergei Zamburov, RV3DR if ARIS

329
00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:45,000
could temporarily use the RS-0 ISS radio
in the ISS service module for school

330
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:49,000
contacts that are already scheduled
until ARIS can resolve the issue.

331
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:54,000
On behalf of the ARIS International Board,
the ARIS delegates and the entire

332
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:57,001
team, I want to thank all of you
for your tremendous volunteer

333
00:23:57,001 --> 00:23:59,001
support to ARIS, Bauer said.

334
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:03,001
We will get through this and
be more resilient as a result.

335
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:08,001
We have reported where the Dayton
Hamvention and the Orlando Hamcation have

336
00:24:08,001 --> 00:24:10,001
canceled in-person events again this year.

337
00:24:11,001 --> 00:24:16,000
It appears that not all organizers of
amateur radio events are looking to cancel

338
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:17,001
their plans for 2021.

339
00:24:18,001 --> 00:24:23,001
Mark your calendars for now because a
pandemic safety and hygiene plan has been

340
00:24:23,001 --> 00:24:28,001
drawn up to enable ham radio Friedrichshafen
to take place between June 25 and

341
00:24:28,001 --> 00:24:30,000
27 in Germany.

342
00:24:30,001 --> 00:24:35,001
Details have been released by organizers
and the DARC who are hoping to avoid the

343
00:24:35,001 --> 00:24:39,001
second cancellation of the largest
amateur radio convention in Europe.

344
00:24:39,001 --> 00:24:44,001
The safety procedures are outlined on
the event website and give details about

345
00:24:44,001 --> 00:24:49,001
mask and disinfectant use as well as cleaning,
distancing and contact tracing

346
00:24:49,001 --> 00:24:51,000
that will be taking place.

347
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:57,000
The procedures also outline other ways to
avoid contact which include the absence

348
00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:01,000
of greeting rituals and cashless
payment for anything purchased.

349
00:25:01,001 --> 00:25:04,000
More details will be
released later this spring.

350
00:25:05,001 --> 00:25:09,000
Youth on the Air month of success in
the Americas and around the world.

351
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:12,001
December was Youth on the Air month 2020 and

352
00:25:12,001 --> 00:25:14,000
it was a great success in the Americas.

353
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:19,000
For more details on this year's Youth
on the Month we go to Rick Lindquist,

354
00:25:19,001 --> 00:25:22,000
WW1ME at League Headquarters.

355
00:25:22,001 --> 00:25:28,000
Youth operated amateur radio stations
operating under the Youth on the Air or

356
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:33,001
Yoda banner in the western hemisphere
contributed more than 14,600 contacts to

357
00:25:33,001 --> 00:25:38,000
the annual worldwide event which
celebrates youth in amateur radio.

358
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:44,001
Two dozen operators under the age of 26
used special event call signs to promote

359
00:25:44,001 --> 00:25:50,000
youth in amateur radio in the Americas
for one by one special event call signs

360
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:56,001
K8Y, K8O, K8T and K8A were on the air rotating

361
00:25:56,001 --> 00:25:58,001
among participating operators.

362
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:05,000
This marks a more than 11% increase in
the contact count from last year's total

363
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:07,000
of nearly 12,500.

364
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:12,001
Pennsylvania teenager Michael Lippert,
W3MLJ said his favorite part of Yoda Month

365
00:26:12,001 --> 00:26:16,001
was running five radios at
once all on digital modes.

366
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:22,000
Fifth grader Kalen Rizmiller,
K8MTJ said he got a kick out of logging

367
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:27,000
ZR1ADI in South Africa on 20 meter FT8.

368
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:34,000
Globally more than 137,000 Yoda
Month contacts were logged under the

369
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:37,001
46 call signs that HAMS younger
than 26 put on the air.

370
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:43,001
That surpassed last year's
record number of 129,029.

371
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:49,000
The US placed second behind
Croatia in the total number of

372
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,001
contacts made during the event.

373
00:26:51,001 --> 00:26:56,000
Using lessons from Youth on the Air Month
2019 make organizing more streamlined

374
00:26:56,000 --> 00:27:02,000
and flexible for our operators this
year said Bryant Roskal, KG5HVO, who

375
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:05,000
coordinated the events of the
24 operators and their logs.

376
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:09,001
As part of their responsibilities,
they also managed logbook of the world

377
00:27:09,001 --> 00:27:15,001
accounts for US stations, the qrz.
com profiles for all the call signs, maintained

378
00:27:15,001 --> 00:27:20,000
an operator schedule, worked with Youth
on the Air Month manager Atomi Varro,

379
00:27:20,001 --> 00:27:25,000
HA8RT, and reported to the Youth on the
Air Camp Committee in the Americas.

380
00:27:26,001 --> 00:27:30,000
December Youth on the Air Month served
as a prelude to the first ever Youth AM

381
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:32,000
Camp hosted in the Western Hemisphere.

382
00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:36,001
The event was tentatively scheduled for
July 11th through the 16th of 2021.

383
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:42,000
More than 2,100 operators of all ages
received awards based on the number of

384
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:44,000
Youth on the Air contacts made.

385
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:49,000
Unclaimed awards can be downloaded.
Additional statistics are also available.

386
00:27:49,001 --> 00:27:55,000
All Youth on the Air Month QSL cards should
be requested via OQRS on the club log

387
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,000
website where registration is required.

388
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:01,000
More information about Youth on the
Air in the Americas can be found

389
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:02,001
on the Youth on the Air website.

390
00:28:03,001 --> 00:28:08,000
Originating from Albany, New York and
distributed worldwide, you are listening to

391
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:10,000
This Week in Amateur Radio.

392
00:28:39,001 --> 00:28:46,001
I'm here to counsel you. I'm the Dr.
Laura of computing. I'm here to make

393
00:28:46,001 --> 00:28:50,001
you feel better about your pathetic hardware.

394
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,000
No, I'm here to tell you that your hardware
is not your enemy. It's your friend,

395
00:28:55,001 --> 00:28:58,001
even though it's mean and
nasty and breaks all the time.

396
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:04,000
I'm here to help you find new hardware.
I'm here to spend your money. I'm here to

397
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:06,001
save you money. I'm here to do it all.

398
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:11,001
Our new forums. Forums are back, baby.
Do you remember forums?

399
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:15,000
It's funny, some of the people in the
forum are saying this is kind of like the

400
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:17,001
old days of BBSs.
You remember those? You probably know.

401
00:29:17,001 --> 00:29:24,000
You have to be of a certain age to
remember dialing in with your phone line.

402
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:34,000
And you'd get online. I'm old enough I
remember actually picking up the handset

403
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:37,001
on my Western electric phone and
jamming it into rubber cups.

404
00:29:38,001 --> 00:29:42,001
That was the modem. And then, you know,
Mom would pick up the other end of the

405
00:29:42,001 --> 00:29:47,000
extension and go, Mom, get off the line.
I'm on the I'm on the Internet. Well, we

406
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:51,000
didn't call it. Do we? I'm on the BBS BBS.

407
00:29:51,001 --> 00:29:57,000
The bulletin board system. So but they're
back in a way. And I think some of this

408
00:29:57,000 --> 00:29:59,000
is because we all abandoned.

409
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:04,000
Didn't we? We all abandoned all of the stuff,
the good stuff that we had started

410
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:10,000
in the I started BBS in the 80s, but in
the 90s and later where the Internet came

411
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:14,001
along and all of a sudden Twitter and
Facebook and read it and took over from

412
00:30:14,001 --> 00:30:20,001
these things,
these centralized forums and mini blogs that

413
00:30:20,001 --> 00:30:22,000
became, you know, where you hung out.

414
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:26,001
But I think there's a little backlash,
isn't there now to to these big guys

415
00:30:26,001 --> 00:30:29,000
because they're kind of I don't know.

416
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:33,001
It's like it's like saying I'd like to
talk to my friends in the middle of Grand

417
00:30:33,001 --> 00:30:39,000
Central Station, please.
It's just they're busy. There's a lot going on.

418
00:30:39,001 --> 00:30:44,001
So we started a forum last week.
It's done very well. It's like the old days of

419
00:30:44,001 --> 00:30:48,001
forums or BBS is where you go,
you create an account and you say hi to people.

420
00:30:48,001 --> 00:30:52,000
And it's not a lot of people. It's maybe
a thousand other people. And it's kind

421
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:55,001
of people, you know, you get to know
over time and chat with them and you can

422
00:30:55,001 --> 00:30:58,001
post pictures and you do the same
stuff you would do on Facebook or

423
00:30:58,001 --> 00:31:00,000
Reddit or even Twitter.

424
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:03,001
But it's but it's a little more.
It's a small community instead of Grand Central

425
00:31:03,001 --> 00:31:07,001
Station. It's Petticoat Junction.
It's a little a little place

426
00:31:07,001 --> 00:31:09,001
where you where you can hang out.

427
00:31:10,001 --> 00:31:16,000
The address for that is community tech
labs dot com. Alphabet is grounding.

428
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:22,001
You know, when you name a project
Loon because it's kind of

429
00:31:22,001 --> 00:31:28,001
crazy, you shouldn't be too
surprised if it doesn't go anywhere.

430
00:31:28,001 --> 00:31:35,001
It was what Google and then later
Alphabet calls a moon shot, a long bet, a

431
00:31:35,001 --> 00:31:39,000
crazy idea that probably won't go anywhere.

432
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:42,001
But hey, we're going to do it anyway
because we have so much money

433
00:31:42,001 --> 00:31:44,001
that we can do things like this.

434
00:31:44,001 --> 00:31:51,000
What was Loon? Well, the idea was to
give the entire world Internet via

435
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:57,001
balloons,
big old balloons circling the globe that would

436
00:31:57,001 --> 00:32:01,001
kind of I guess they'd have a
ground station beaming up to the

437
00:32:01,001 --> 00:32:03,000
balloon and then back down to you.

438
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:09,000
They launched it, you know, a long time ago,
2013, the balloons were not just,

439
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:12,001
you know, party balloons. They were
really kind of, you know, fancy weather

440
00:32:12,001 --> 00:32:15,000
balloons that went way up into
the stratosphere and stuff.

441
00:32:15,001 --> 00:32:19,001
They actually got to the point where they
would be up there for months, years,

442
00:32:20,001 --> 00:32:22,001
kind of hard to control where a balloon goes.

443
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:28,001
But I guess the idea is if we launch enough
of them, I don't know. They use it in

444
00:32:28,001 --> 00:32:30,001
Peru after a big earthquake there.

445
00:32:30,001 --> 00:32:34,000
Remember after the Hurricane Maria,
they used it in Puerto

446
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:35,001
Rico to give them Internet access.

447
00:32:36,001 --> 00:32:42,001
They were actually doing it last year in Kenya.
But now they've decided to ground

448
00:32:42,001 --> 00:32:45,001
Loon, to pop the balloon, if you will.

449
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:52,000
The guy who heads these projects,
he's part of the Google X project,

450
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:58,001
their moon shot factory, they call it,
has a very appropriate name, Astro Teller.

451
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:04,001
He actually said, you know what,
time to pop the balloon. We probably should

452
00:33:04,001 --> 00:33:06,000
just stop.

453
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,000
But, you know, to be fair, he said when
I heard about it the first time, I only

454
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,000
gave about a one or two
percent chance of succeeding.

455
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:18,000
So, you know, you know, it was a moon shot.
It was a long, long bet.

456
00:33:18,001 --> 00:33:23,000
Part of the problem is, you know,
when they started doing this, the Internet only

457
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:25,000
reached about three quarters of the Earth.

458
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:28,001
And so there was a lot of other
people that could be served.

459
00:33:29,001 --> 00:33:33,001
Problem they found, got to 93 percent.
But the problem they found is that the

460
00:33:33,001 --> 00:33:38,000
remaining seven percent either couldn't
afford the technology to get the signals,

461
00:33:38,001 --> 00:33:42,000
like the fancy phones,
or didn't even want the Internet.

462
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:48,000
We don't need that. Yes, believe it or not.
In fact, I find this extremely

463
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:51,000
encouraging. About seven percent
of the planet doesn't really care.

464
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:57,001
So and that plus the fact that Elon Musk
is launching 12000 satellites to do the

465
00:33:57,001 --> 00:34:00,000
same thing and they'll be
a little bit more robust.

466
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:05,001
Jeff Bezos is Blue Origin wants to do
something similar. So there's other people

467
00:34:05,001 --> 00:34:11,001
kind of handling this cool
technology giant balloons called the

468
00:34:11,001 --> 00:34:13,000
Loon aptly named.

469
00:34:13,001 --> 00:34:15,000
But it's it's over.

470
00:34:16,001 --> 00:34:19,001
Google actually is in the news,
too, because of Australia.

471
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:22,000
There there's a bill it's
not yet been voted on in the

472
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:24,000
Australian. What do they call it?

473
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:29,000
Parliament. I don't know the Australian
legislative body that would charge Google

474
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:31,000
and Facebook for the.

475
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:35,000
You know, when you search for a news
story or you look at a news, you know,

476
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:39,000
Google News or whatever, you get a little
one or two lines from the article that

477
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,001
they're referring to and then a
link and you can read the rest.

478
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:46,000
Seems to me a good thing for the publishers,
you know, that you get

479
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:47,001
a taste of flavor of the article.

480
00:34:48,001 --> 00:34:52,000
The publishers say, no, you can't do that
in Australia. They want money for it.

481
00:34:52,001 --> 00:34:54,001
Rupert Murdoch leading the charge for this.

482
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:58,001
If you're going to put snippets from our
articles, you got to pay us Google and

483
00:34:58,001 --> 00:35:01,001
Facebook. Now, it's not been voted in yet.

484
00:35:01,001 --> 00:35:07,001
It's a proposed legislation, proposed law.
Mel Silva, who's Google's managing

485
00:35:07,001 --> 00:35:11,000
director in Australia,
testified in front of a Senate.

486
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:15,000
Oh, they call it the Senate. There you go.
Committee that the proposed code was

487
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,001
untenable, would set a dangerous precedent.

488
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:22,001
And finally, she said, if you were to
pass this law, it would give us no real

489
00:35:22,001 --> 00:35:26,000
choice but to stop making Google
search available in Australia.

490
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:32,001
Wow. That's like that's the nuclear option.
Yeah, fine. Go ahead. Do that. You

491
00:35:32,001 --> 00:35:34,001
won't have us to kick around anymore.

492
00:35:34,001 --> 00:35:41,000
I saw some people say, yeah, fine.
Good. Let's make Google less

493
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,000
powerful, less of a monolith, less dominant.

494
00:35:43,001 --> 00:35:47,001
I mean, it is really true. You know, in the U.
S., I don't know. I think Google's

495
00:35:47,001 --> 00:35:52,001
only about 75% of all searches,
but it's closer to 90% in much of the world.

496
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:55,001
It's that's a monopoly.
And if something isn't on

497
00:35:55,001 --> 00:35:58,000
Google,
it's almost like it's not on the Internet.

498
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:03,000
That's how you find it if it's not in Google.
Now, I know there are other

499
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:04,001
choices. There are lots of other choices.

500
00:36:04,001 --> 00:36:08,000
And that's why some people say, well,
this is a good thing. Force people in

501
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:14,000
Australia to use other things like Google's,
like Microsoft Bing or Duck Duck Go

502
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:15,001
or Start Page.

503
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:22,000
Yeah, there are other choices. Apple just
added a new search engine option on the

504
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:23,001
iPhone called Ecosia.

505
00:36:23,001 --> 00:36:30,000
It's a search engine that plants trees.
Yeah, I'm not kidding. Eco. They're based

506
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:36,000
in Berlin. They donate 80%
of their profits to organizations that focus on

507
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:39,001
reforesting and planting trees. Ecosia.

508
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:45,000
The problem with Bing, Duck Duck Go,
Ecosia and the others is their results. The

509
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:48,001
search, you know, that's why Google's so
popular is because when you search for

510
00:36:48,001 --> 00:36:51,001
something on Google,
you pretty much get what you want. Right?

511
00:36:51,001 --> 00:36:56,001
The results are useful. That's why
Google completely dominated the search

512
00:36:56,001 --> 00:36:59,001
industry when, you know,
15 years ago, it beat out to Vista.

513
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:04,001
And there were a ton of other search
engines now long forgotten. There was one

514
00:37:04,001 --> 00:37:10,000
began with an L, Lycos. Remember that?
No, no one does because Google came

515
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:12,000
along and what was it?

516
00:37:12,001 --> 00:37:16,000
You know, I mean, that's the truth.
Somebody has a monopoly. It's because people

517
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:19,000
want what they got.
And Google's free and it does a good job.

518
00:37:19,001 --> 00:37:23,001
But, you know, so we'll see. I mean,
if you were in Australia, if maybe you are

519
00:37:23,001 --> 00:37:27,001
an Australian and you lost Google,
I guess you just say, well, that's, you know,

520
00:37:27,001 --> 00:37:31,000
not ideal,
but we'll use Duck Duck Go or Ecosia.

521
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:35,001
Yes, you know, I mean, it's it'll be
we'll watch with interest. How about

522
00:37:35,001 --> 00:37:37,001
that? I will be watching with interest.

523
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:40,001
Let's see. What else can we talk about?

524
00:37:40,001 --> 00:37:46,000
I mean, we get a lot of calls. We did
actually last year towards the end of the

525
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:50,000
year because people had seen
that Adobe Flash was going away.

526
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,000
You know, that's the technology that gave
you dancing monkeys on the Internet for

527
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:58,001
so many years. In fact,
when when YouTube first started out, the

528
00:37:58,001 --> 00:38:00,000
videos on YouTube were in Flash.

529
00:38:00,001 --> 00:38:06,001
But Adobe kind of ran into some headwinds
with Flash. For one thing, it was kind

530
00:38:06,001 --> 00:38:10,001
of notoriously insecure. People had
all sorts of security issues with it.

531
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:16,000
But for another thing, Apple, Steve Jobs,
who kind of had an axe to grind with

532
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:20,001
Adobe for other reasons, published a open
letter on the front page of Apple.com

533
00:38:20,001 --> 00:38:25,001
way back in 2010 saying we're not going
to support Flash on our iPhones or on our

534
00:38:25,001 --> 00:38:27,000
iPads because we don't like it.

535
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:30,001
It's it's a pig. It's slow.
That was 10 years ago. Took

536
00:38:30,001 --> 00:38:32,000
10 years to finally kill Flash.

537
00:38:32,001 --> 00:38:39,000
December 31st, Flash went away. Adobe
stopped using it. And we got a lot of calls

538
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:41,000
from people saying,
what am I going to do? What my website is

539
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:42,001
going to work and my game.

540
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:46,001
And I think by now, probably it's only
the oldest site sites that haven't been

541
00:38:46,001 --> 00:38:48,001
updated in years that are still using Flash.

542
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:53,000
And frankly, those probably won't ever be
updated. They're abandonware. But most

543
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:55,001
sites, I mean,
YouTube stopped using Flash years ago.

544
00:38:56,000 --> 00:39:02,000
Funny story, though, there's a railway
system in northern China, Dalian, that was

545
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,000
running on Flash, the whole railway system.

546
00:39:06,001 --> 00:39:10,000
They've known. We've known since 2017
that Flash was going away. But apparently

547
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:14,000
whoever is running this railway system,
the China railway Shenyang

548
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:16,000
wasn't paying attention.

549
00:39:16,001 --> 00:39:20,001
By the way, Flash is a programming language.
I guess you could do things like run

550
00:39:20,001 --> 00:39:23,001
a railway on it.
I wouldn't want to, but you could.

551
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:31,000
So for 20 hours, the railroads in
Dalian and Liaoning Province in

552
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,001
northern China weren't running.

553
00:39:35,001 --> 00:39:41,000
Staffers couldn't view train operating
diagrams. They couldn't set up scheduling.

554
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:44,000
They couldn't arrange shutting.
Basically, everything stopped.

555
00:39:44,001 --> 00:39:48,001
How did they fix it? They got a pirated
version of Flash and they installed it at

556
00:39:48,001 --> 00:39:51,000
4.30 in the morning.
Everything started working again.

557
00:39:54,001 --> 00:39:59,001
That's probably the most extreme example
of we're not giving up Flash ever.

558
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:05,001
They're running a pirated version of Flash.

559
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:10,001
Oh, my. Anyway, I'm glad you were here
and I'm here and I'll be here next week

560
00:40:10,001 --> 00:40:14,000
and I hope you'll come by and bring
your friends too as we talk high tech.

561
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:16,001
Lia'll report the tech guide.

562
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:21,001
Are you ready for another trip into amateur
radio history? I'm Bill Cantonelli,

563
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:28,001
W2XOY, and I'll be back in a moment with
another edition of the Ancient Amateur

564
00:40:28,001 --> 00:40:32,001
Archives here on This Week in Amateur Radio.

565
00:40:32,001 --> 00:40:37,001
Now celebrating our 22nd year keeping
the amateur radio community informed,

566
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:43,000
you're listening to This Week in Amateur Radio,
available worldwide as a podcast

567
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:48,001
from our web at www.twir.net.

568
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:16,000
November 15, 1945.
The day that amateurs had waited for ever since

569
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:22,000
December 7, 1941. Finally, after three
years and eleven months of wartime radio

570
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:25,000
silence, amateurs were allowed back on the air.

571
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:30,001
Granted, we didn't have everything back yet.
The initial authorization allowed

572
00:41:30,001 --> 00:41:37,000
amateur operations on 10 meters from 28
through 29.7 megacycles, 5 meters from

573
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:43,001
56 to 60 megacycles, and the new 2 meter
band at 144 through 148 megacycles.

574
00:41:43,001 --> 00:41:49,000
And there were restrictions on these limited
frequencies. Our old pre-war 5 meter

575
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:54,001
allocation was temporary. The new post-war
band was shifted to 6 meters from 50

576
00:41:54,001 --> 00:41:58,001
to 54 megacycles, but the actual
transition would not take place until

577
00:41:58,001 --> 00:42:00,000
March 1, 1946.

578
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:06,001
So, we were back on the 56 to 60 megacycle
segment for only 3 and a half months.

579
00:42:07,001 --> 00:42:14,000
On the new 2 meter band, the frequencies
from 146.5 through 148 megacycles were

580
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:19,000
unavailable within a 50 mile radius of
Washington DC and Seattle, Washington.

581
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:25,000
The military was still using these frequencies,
as well as our 160, 80, 40, and

582
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:30,000
20 meter HF bands. The military also
occupied our new UHF and microwave

583
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:35,001
allocations. It would be months,
maybe a year or more before the armed forces

584
00:42:35,001 --> 00:42:38,001
would fully vacate our bands
and return them to us.

585
00:42:38,001 --> 00:42:45,000
But amateurs didn't care. Unlike 1919,
when there was open hostility to us by the

586
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:50,000
military and the threat of our elimination,
the post-World War II armed forces,

587
00:42:50,001 --> 00:42:54,001
as well as the FCC, were fully aware of
the tremendous assistance that amateurs

588
00:42:54,001 --> 00:42:57,000
had given throughout the war, and they were

589
00:42:57,000 --> 00:42:58,001
eager to give us back our frequencies.

590
00:42:58,001 --> 00:43:03,000
The A.R.L. was working closely with the
FCC and the military to get our bands

591
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:10,000
back. One band, however, was apparently
not coming back. Our 160 meter band,

592
00:43:10,001 --> 00:43:15,001
the birthplace of our post-1912 operations,
was fully occupied by the military

593
00:43:15,001 --> 00:43:18,001
with its new Loran radio navigation system.

594
00:43:18,001 --> 00:43:23,001
The armed services and the FCC made it
clear that this segment was to remain for

595
00:43:23,001 --> 00:43:30,000
the use of Loran. Over the years,
the FCC obtained small concessions, a 25

596
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:35,001
kilocycle segment here and there,
25 watt power limitations, day and night

597
00:43:35,001 --> 00:43:41,001
restrictions, but from the 1940s right
up until the early 1980s, our 160 meter

598
00:43:41,001 --> 00:43:47,001
band sounded like a huge, broad banded
buzzsaw as Loran completely dominated it.

599
00:43:47,001 --> 00:43:52,000
But this was a minor blot on the landscape
as amateurs rushed to get back on the

600
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:58,000
air. 10 meters was the band they went to first,
and the 28 through 29.7 megacycle

601
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:00,001
range became crowded with
those making up for lost time.

602
00:44:01,001 --> 00:44:06,001
Two meters was next. Hams modified their old 2.
5 meter equipment to operate on

603
00:44:06,001 --> 00:44:11,000
the new band, and soon the rushing sounds
of the super-regenerative receiver were

604
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:16,001
everywhere. The more adventurous were
trying out something called FM. 5 meters

605
00:44:16,001 --> 00:44:22,001
was quiet. Since the band was available
for only 105 days, many hams spent their

606
00:44:22,001 --> 00:44:29,001
time converting their rigs to the new 6
meter band. On March 1st 1946, our old 5

607
00:44:29,001 --> 00:44:34,001
meter band died, and the new 50
to 54 megacycle segment was born.

608
00:44:34,001 --> 00:44:40,001
Also on that date, to compensate the
amateurs for the loss of 29.7 to 30

609
00:44:40,001 --> 00:44:46,001
megacycles, we were given an 11 meter
band at 27 megacycles. That's right, the

610
00:44:46,001 --> 00:44:50,000
present day CB band was
once an amateur allocation.

611
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:57,000
By May 1946, we had our 80 and 75
meter allocations back. We also had a

612
00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:03,001
temporary allocation from 235 to 240
megacycles, which would soon be shifted down

613
00:45:03,001 --> 00:45:06,000
to 220 to 225 megacycles.

614
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:13,000
On November 2nd 1946, the FCC finally
released our 40 and 20 meter bands.

615
00:45:13,001 --> 00:45:20,000
By the end of 1946, we had our full HF
spectrum back. 80 and 75 meters, 40

616
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:25,000
meters, which was CW only,
20, 11 and 10 meters.

617
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:31,001
Note that there was no 15 meter allocation
then. Our 15 meter band did not appear

618
00:45:31,001 --> 00:45:37,000
until 1952. The military restrictions on
our 2 meter band were lifted in June of

619
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:43,000
1947, and except for 160 meters,
the military was off of our bands.

620
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:49,001
By 1947, every amateur band from 80 to 2
meters was full of stations, but there

621
00:45:49,001 --> 00:45:53,001
was trouble brewing. Amateurs weren't
the only ones taken to the airwaves.

622
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:58,001
Television was growing by leaps and bounds.
In 1946, there were only

623
00:45:58,001 --> 00:46:00,000
7000 TV sets.

624
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:07,000
In 1947, the number jumped to
180,000 and by 1948, there were

625
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:12,001
over 1 million TVs in use. Amateurs who
were used to harmonically related bands

626
00:46:12,001 --> 00:46:16,000
and an empty VHF spectrum
were not prepared for the

627
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:18,001
TVI their neighbors were experiencing.

628
00:46:18,001 --> 00:46:24,001
A typical unshielded amateur transmitter
operating on 14, 28 or 50 megacycles

629
00:46:24,001 --> 00:46:29,001
could wipe out all the TVs in the neighborhood.
QST ran a series of articles on

630
00:46:29,001 --> 00:46:33,001
proper shielding and filtering of stations,
and HAMS gradually learned to

631
00:46:33,001 --> 00:46:35,001
eliminate harmonics from their transmitters.

632
00:46:35,001 --> 00:46:40,001
But there was one band where shielding
and good design didn't seem to help. 6

633
00:46:40,001 --> 00:46:46,000
meters. Our 50 to 54 megacycle segment
was sandwiched right between TV channel 1

634
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:53,000
from 44 to 50 megacycles and TV channel
2 from 54 to 60. At that time, only

635
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:55,001
channel 2 was actually being used for TV.

636
00:46:55,001 --> 00:47:01,000
The channel 1 range was still part of
the old pre-war FM band from 42 to 50

637
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:05,001
megacycles, which was being phased out
in favor of the new 88 through 108

638
00:47:05,001 --> 00:47:10,001
megacycle allocation. We were causing
interference to WCBS and other handful of

639
00:47:10,001 --> 00:47:14,000
stations on channel 2,
and the problem would only get worse when

640
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:15,001
channel 1 became available.

641
00:47:15,001 --> 00:47:21,000
Tests were run and an interesting solution
was proposed. Because a television

642
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:27,000
video signal is amplitude modulated,
operates with a wide bandwidth and uses the

643
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:32,000
lower portion of the TV channel,
it was determined that channel 2 was twice as

644
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:36,000
susceptible to interference from a
6 meter station than channel 1 was.

645
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:42,001
[...] A-R-R-L's proposal to the FCC,
eliminate channel 2, keep channel 1.

646
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:48,000
But this idea didn't sit well with the
stations already on channel 2, nor did it

647
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:52,000
win the approval of Major Armstrong,
who was still fighting the grand battle to

648
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:55,001
keep FM broadcasting in the
42 to 50 megacycle range.

649
00:47:55,001 --> 00:48:02,000
And so, in August 1947, the FCC withdrew
channel 1 from the TV allocations.

650
00:48:02,001 --> 00:48:08,000
By the end of 1947, all the pre-war FM
broadcast stations had disappeared from

651
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:13,000
the 42 to 50 megacycle range,
which was then turned over to public service.

652
00:48:13,001 --> 00:48:17,000
Amateurs learned to operate in the
lower portions of 6 meters to avoid

653
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:19,000
TVI to channel 2.

654
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:23,001
In our next installment, we are going to
look at a major upheaval that began 40

655
00:48:23,001 --> 00:48:30,001
years ago and pitted amateur against
amateur and, according to some, the A-R-R-L

656
00:48:30,001 --> 00:48:36,000
against hands. I'm talking about incentive
licensing and how it changed the

657
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:38,000
entire licensing structure.

658
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:16,000
This is W2XBS with the propagation
forecast for Friday, January

659
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:18,000
29, 2021.

660
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:24,000
Tad Cook, K7RA, in Seattle reports that
solar activity increased this week. We

661
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:30,000
saw no sunspot-less days, and the average
daily sunspot number rose from 14.7 to

662
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:37,000
28.1. The average daily solar flux
was up also from 76.1 to 77.2.

663
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:43,001
Average daily planetary A-endices rose
from 4 to 9.4 due to a minor geomagnetic

664
00:49:43,001 --> 00:49:48,001
storm which occurred on Monday.
On that day, Alaska's high-latitude college A

665
00:49:48,001 --> 00:49:55,001
-index was 33. Predicted solar flux
for the next few weeks is 76, 75, 74,

666
00:49:55,001 --> 00:50:02,000
and 74 on January 29 to February 1.
72, 70, 70 again, and

667
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:09,000
72 on February 2 through the 5th.
76 on February 6 to the 10th, and

668
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:12,001
77 on February 11 to the 20th.

669
00:50:12,001 --> 00:50:19,000
The predicted planetary A-endice is
5 and 8 on January 29 to the 31st.

670
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:26,000
18, 12, and 8 on February 1 through the 3rd,
respectively. 5 on January 4

671
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:32,001
through the 6th, 10 on February 7 and 8th,
and back down to 5 on February 9

672
00:50:32,001 --> 00:50:34,000
through the 19th.

673
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:40,001
Now the AMSAT report. AMSAT is continuing
to assess the status of the RAD FX-SAT

674
00:50:40,001 --> 00:50:47,000
-2 or FOX 1E amateur radio cubesat after
a Hammond Nevada reported hearing his

675
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:53,000
CW signal weekly via the spacecraft's
transponder on January 27.

676
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:58,000
AMSAT engineering and operations was
able to confirm the reports from Brad

677
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:04,001
Shoemaker, W5SAT, and determine that
RAD FX-SAT-2 is partially functioning,

678
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,001
although signals are extremely weak.
Nothing has been heard

679
00:51:08,001 --> 00:51:10,001
from the satellite before this.

680
00:51:10,001 --> 00:51:15,001
AMSAT said that while it appreciated
hearing from those who were also able to

681
00:51:15,001 --> 00:51:21,000
detect their own or other signals in
recent passes, it asked that stations not

682
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:25,001
try to transmit through the
transponder until further notice.

683
00:51:25,001 --> 00:51:31,001
The next crucial step in evaluating the
condition of RAD FX-SAT-2 is to determine

684
00:51:31,001 --> 00:51:38,001
whether or not the 1200 BPS telemetry
beacon is operating and if possible to

685
00:51:38,001 --> 00:51:41,000
copy telemetry from the beacon.

686
00:51:41,001 --> 00:51:46,000
The AMSAT report comes to us every
week courtesy of Bruce Page, KK5DO.

687
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:50,001
Paperwork and equipment checks have
kept some members of the Rebel DX Group

688
00:51:50,001 --> 00:51:55,000
occupied since their arrival in Cape Town,
South Africa, in early 2021.

689
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:59,000
The team writes on the DX News
website and their Facebook page,

690
00:51:59,001 --> 00:52:01,000
The Bouvet Trip is on track.

691
00:52:01,001 --> 00:52:06,000
The report that they are going forward
with the 2021 DXpedition in spite of not

692
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:10,001
yet having full operating budget,
noting that they are not applying to any DX

693
00:52:10,001 --> 00:52:12,001
Foundations or Clubs for assistance.

694
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:20,000
Polish DXpeditioner Dom 3Z9DX has organized
this trip, which is the team's second

695
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:24,001
attempt at the sub-anartic island,
one of the most coveted DX on the planet.

696
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:30,001
The expeditioners first attempt in 2019
was scrapped by the ship's captain after

697
00:52:30,001 --> 00:52:33,001
a severe cyclone swept in,
damaging the vessel and making

698
00:52:33,001 --> 00:52:35,000
a safe landing unlikely.

699
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:42,001
Meanwhile, there are reports in the Ohio
Penn DX Bulletin that Dom 3Z9DX has been

700
00:52:42,001 --> 00:52:48,000
heard on the air from South Africa recently,
operating from Cape Town as ZS Slant

701
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:50,000
3Z9DX.

702
00:52:50,001 --> 00:52:53,001
He has been heard on 80, 20 and 17 meters.

703
00:52:54,001 --> 00:52:58,000
QSL via the club's log, OQRS.

704
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:03,001
Here's the current listing of upcoming
ARRL Learning Network webinars.

705
00:53:03,001 --> 00:53:07,000
Please note that the webinars are
a member benefit and that this

706
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:08,001
schedule is subject to change.

707
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:14,001
Easy helical copper tape and PVC 2-meter
vertical antenna hosted by John Portune,

708
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:16,001
W6, NBC.

709
00:53:17,001 --> 00:53:21,001
Learn how to quickly build a tiny
18-inch continuously loaded lightweight

710
00:53:21,001 --> 00:53:25,001
portable or base station 2-meter
omnidirectional vertical with performance and

711
00:53:25,001 --> 00:53:28,001
efficiency comparable to a 5-foot J-Pulp.

712
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:32,000
All you need is some hardware
store copper tape and PVC

713
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:34,000
pipe, and the cost is roughly $10.

714
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:39,000
It's an easy afternoon's homebrew project,
ideal for the new ham but equal

715
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:41,000
to the experienced ham's needs.

716
00:53:41,001 --> 00:53:43,001
It's great for events like bike-a-thons.

717
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:47,001
It also makes an excellent ham radio
club hands-on building project and the

718
00:53:47,001 --> 00:53:49,001
design is adaptable to other bands.

719
00:53:49,001 --> 00:53:55,001
This webinar is scheduled for Tuesday,
February 2, 2021 at 1 p.m. Eastern or

720
00:53:55,001 --> 00:53:57,001
1800 UTC.

721
00:53:58,001 --> 00:54:02,001
Interesting Stories about Ham Radio and
Weather Spotting hosted by Rob Moceto,

722
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:08,001
KD1-CY One of the most critical ways
amateur radio supports agencies such as the

723
00:54:08,001 --> 00:54:13,000
National Weather Service, National Hurricane
Center and Emergency Management is

724
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:16,001
through weather spotting via the National
Weather Service SkyWarn program.

725
00:54:16,001 --> 00:54:21,001
This presentation reviews some interesting
stories about how amateurs involved in

726
00:54:21,001 --> 00:54:25,000
SkyWarn have saved lives and
property and why this is an

727
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:26,001
important amateur radio activity.

728
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:32,001
This webinar is scheduled for Thursday,
February 11, 2021 at 8 p.m. Eastern or

729
00:54:32,001 --> 00:54:36,000
0100 UTC on Friday, February 12.

730
00:54:36,001 --> 00:54:43,000
Maxim Memorial Station W1AW Tour
hosted by Joe Carcia, NJ1Q,

731
00:54:43,001 --> 00:54:49,001
W1AW station manager Maxim Memorial
Station W1AW located in Newington,

732
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:54,000
Connecticut was established to honor the
memory of A.R.L.'s co-founder and first

733
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:56,000
president here in Percy Maxim.

734
00:54:56,000 --> 00:55:00,001
Although the first radio station of the A.
R.L. was actually located in Hartford,

735
00:55:00,001 --> 00:55:07,000
Connecticut and active as W1MK,
W1AW in Newington is known worldwide and

736
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:11,000
considered the radio station most
associated with here in Percy Maxim.

737
00:55:11,001 --> 00:55:16,000
Formally established in 1938, nearly two
years after the death of here in Percy

738
00:55:16,000 --> 00:55:22,000
Maxim, W1AW has consistently been on the
air save for the time when the station

739
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:25,001
was ordered off the air by
the FCC due to World War II.

740
00:55:25,001 --> 00:55:31,000
This guided tour will provide an inside
look at W1AW and will be led by station

741
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:34,000
manager Joe Carcia, NJ1Q.

742
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:41,001
This webinar is scheduled for Thursday,
February 18, 2021 at 0330 p.m. Eastern or

743
00:55:41,001 --> 00:55:43,001
2030 UTC.

744
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:49,001
Talking to Astronauts, an elementary
school's exciting areas experience hosted by

745
00:55:49,001 --> 00:55:53,000
Diane Warner, K.E.H.H.L.D.

746
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:57,001
This is a story about Talmage Elementary
School's participation in a once-in-a

747
00:55:57,001 --> 00:55:59,000
-lifetime Aries school contact.

748
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:04,000
You'll learn about their amazing journey
leading up to the amateur radio contact

749
00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:06,001
with an astronaut on the
International Space Station.

750
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:11,000
The excitement of the entire experience
was shared not just by the students but

751
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:15,000
included faculty, parents, the community
and local amateur radio operators.

752
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:18,001
You'll also learn how to begin
the process of submitting

753
00:56:18,001 --> 00:56:20,000
your own Aries contact proposal.

754
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:26,001
This webinar is scheduled for Tuesday,
March 2, 2021 at 1 p.m. Eastern or

755
00:56:26,001 --> 00:56:28,000
1800 UTC.

756
00:56:28,001 --> 00:56:33,000
Visit the A.R.L.
Learning Network webpage for more information.

757
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:38,001
The Quarter Century Wireless Association
is looking for an amateur radio operator

758
00:56:38,001 --> 00:56:43,001
who doesn't just love radio but has a
talent for finance and numbers too.

759
00:56:43,001 --> 00:56:48,000
In short, the nonprofit group is in
search of a treasurer to fill the post

760
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:49,001
left vacant last year.

761
00:56:50,001 --> 00:56:54,001
The treasurer is responsible for preparing
the proposed operating budget for

762
00:56:54,001 --> 00:56:56,000
approval by the board of directors.

763
00:56:56,001 --> 00:57:01,000
The treasurer also provides the board with
quarterly income statements along with

764
00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:03,000
a year-end income statement and balance sheet.

765
00:57:03,000 --> 00:57:08,001
The treasurer's responsibilities also
include preparing the necessary paperwork

766
00:57:08,001 --> 00:57:13,001
at tax time, which includes the proper
documents for the employees and contact

767
00:57:13,001 --> 00:57:17,000
workers and the federal tax
return among other forms.

768
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:23,001
Members who are interested
should contact Ken VE6AFO at

769
00:57:23,001 --> 00:57:28,000
presidentatqcwa.org.

770
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:34,001
In 2020, a project between AMSAT UK,
AMSAT NL and Swiss universities

771
00:57:34,001 --> 00:57:39,001
got underway with the aim of equipping
two Swiss satellites with linear

772
00:57:39,001 --> 00:57:41,001
amateur radio transponders.

773
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:46,001
Linear transponders permit several
CW or SSB contacts to take place

774
00:57:46,001 --> 00:57:50,000
simultaneously within a prescribed passband.

775
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:54,000
The satellites also include
features for classroom

776
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:56,000
demonstrations and experiments.

777
00:57:56,001 --> 00:58:01,001
The so-called CHESS project, that stands
for Constellation of High Energy Swiss

778
00:58:01,001 --> 00:58:07,000
Satellites, includes two satellites which
will be built simultaneously and later

779
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:08,001
launched as a constellation.

780
00:58:08,001 --> 00:58:14,001
The main science objective is to improve
understanding of the upper atmosphere by

781
00:58:14,001 --> 00:58:19,000
taking advantage of a constellation
of identical satellites to study the

782
00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:22,001
composition of the Earth's
atmosphere and its density.

783
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:29,000
The Amateur Radio Payload is a joint
project of AMSAT UK and AMSAT NL. Launch is

784
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:33,000
not expected until the fourth quarter of 2022.

785
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:38,001
Now celebrating our 22nd year keeping the
amateur radio community informed, you

786
00:58:38,001 --> 00:58:43,001
are listening to This Week in Amateur Radio,
available worldwide as a podcast

787
00:58:43,001 --> 00:58:49,000
from our web at www.twir.net.

788
00:59:09,001 --> 00:59:15,000
Welcome to the QSO Today Podcast.
I'm Eric Guthforsz, your host.

789
00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:21,000
Ralph Holler, N4RH, started his ham radio
journey as a 9-year-old with a knack

790
00:59:21,000 --> 00:59:24,000
for electronics leading to his
first amateur radio licensing.

791
00:59:24,001 --> 00:59:29,001
Within a few years, Ralph earned a broadcast
engineering licenses, radio station

792
00:59:29,001 --> 00:59:33,000
jobs, an education, and finally a career

793
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:34,001
at the Federal Communications Commission.

794
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:41,000
N4RH was a driving force behind many
of the FCC initiatives that have had a

795
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:44,001
lasting impact on radio amateurs
in the USA and around the world.

796
00:59:45,001 --> 00:59:47,001
N4RH is my QSO Today.

797
00:59:48,001 --> 00:59:51,000
N4RH, this is Eric, 4Z1UG,
are you there, Ralph?

798
00:59:51,001 --> 00:59:53,000
Hi, Eric, it's Ralph, yes I am.

799
00:59:53,001 --> 00:59:57,001
Ralph, thanks for joining me on the
QSO Today Podcast. Can we start at the

800
00:59:57,001 --> 01:00:01,000
beginning of your ham radio story?
When and how did it start for you?

801
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:07,000
That's a little bit of a difficult question.
I have to say I had an interest in

802
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:11,000
radio back probably even
before going to school.

803
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:16,000
My folks used to tell me that they couldn't
keep me away from electronic things.

804
01:00:16,001 --> 01:00:22,000
I would take flashlights apart and move
Christmas tree lights from one plug to

805
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:26,000
another, and sort of anything that had
to do with electricity had my attention.

806
01:00:27,000 --> 01:00:34,000
Then when I was about eight years old,
I met a ham radio operator, his name was

807
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:40,000
Orville Strempel, W0UPU, now a silent key,
but went over to his house

808
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:43,001
and he fired up the rig.

809
01:00:43,001 --> 01:00:49,000
We talked to a number of stations
and I thought, this is pretty neat.

810
01:00:49,001 --> 01:00:56,001
That led to me getting novice license
in 1959 and ultimately upgrading to

811
01:00:56,001 --> 01:00:58,001
extra and I've been licensed ever since.

812
01:00:59,000 --> 01:01:01,001
Did Orville give you the test at that time,
the first test?

813
01:01:01,001 --> 01:01:08,001
No, actually the test was given.
I took a course that was given

814
01:01:08,001 --> 01:01:15,000
by the local radio club to get the novice
license and the instructor of that

815
01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:17,000
course is the one that
actually gave me the test.

816
01:01:17,001 --> 01:01:18,001
I see. And what was the hometown?

817
01:01:19,001 --> 01:01:20,000
Topeka, Kansas.

818
01:01:21,000 --> 01:01:21,001
And the radio club?

819
01:01:22,001 --> 01:01:23,000
Caw Valley radio club.

820
01:01:24,000 --> 01:01:25,000
Caw Valley like KAW?

821
01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:31,001
KAW, yeah. There's a river that flows
through Kansas called the Caw River and so

822
01:01:31,001 --> 01:01:34,000
the club was named after that.

823
01:01:34,001 --> 01:01:37,000
And how old were you in 1959 when
you got your novice license?

824
01:01:37,001 --> 01:01:38,001
I was nine.

825
01:01:39,001 --> 01:01:42,000
Wow, that's actually for those days
that was pretty young, I think.

826
01:01:42,001 --> 01:01:47,000
Yeah, like I said, I was really
interested from an early age. It was

827
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:49,000
fascinating and got my attention.

828
01:01:49,001 --> 01:01:51,000
Do you remember what your first call sign was?

829
01:01:51,001 --> 01:01:54,000
K-N-0-Y-M-A.

830
01:01:54,000 --> 01:01:57,000
I think in those days it was good for a year.

831
01:01:57,001 --> 01:02:02,001
It was good for a year and then I tried
upgrading to general. And those days you

832
01:02:02,001 --> 01:02:06,001
had to go to the FCC office to do that,
which was for me Kansas City.

833
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:12,001
I took the test and the first time I took
it I failed the code and second time I

834
01:02:12,001 --> 01:02:17,000
took it I passed the code and failed the
written and the third time I took it I

835
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:19,000
finally passed it and got my general.

836
01:02:19,001 --> 01:02:21,000
And that was within that year period of time?

837
01:02:21,001 --> 01:02:27,001
Actually, it started in that year and
ultimately by the time I got to general it

838
01:02:27,001 --> 01:02:32,001
was like six months after the novice had
expired so I guess technically I haven't

839
01:02:32,001 --> 01:02:36,000
been licensed continuously but I tried to be.

840
01:02:36,001 --> 01:02:38,001
No, but technically you were ten
years old when you got your general.

841
01:02:39,001 --> 01:02:40,000
That's true, yes.

842
01:02:40,001 --> 01:02:44,000
That's very impressive because I think
in those days I remember taking the

843
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:47,000
general at 16 years of age
and it was pretty hard.

844
01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:53,000
Well, I went on and as soon as I got the
general class there was no advance in

845
01:02:53,000 --> 01:02:55,001
those days. It was general to extra.

846
01:02:56,000 --> 01:03:02,000
But I didn't go that route. I then started
on my commercial licenses and got my

847
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:09,000
third class commercial license,
radio telephone license when I was 12, upgraded

848
01:03:09,000 --> 01:03:13,001
into second class and got my first class
radio telephone license when I was 13.

849
01:03:13,001 --> 01:03:19,000
So you have a first class radio telephone
license at age 13 where you needed in

850
01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:22,001
Topeka, Kansas by any of the
radio stations there to be their

851
01:03:22,001 --> 01:03:24,001
engineer or to at least sign logs?

852
01:03:25,001 --> 01:03:30,000
In fact, I became an engineer at one
of the local radio stations when I was

853
01:03:30,000 --> 01:03:32,000
14, still in high school.

854
01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:37,001
I worked there part time as a
transmitter engineer, ultimately a

855
01:03:37,001 --> 01:03:39,001
combination engineer disc jockey.

856
01:03:40,001 --> 01:03:43,001
Then when I left for college I
went to a different station.

857
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:48,000
I went to the University of Kansas in Lawrence,
Kansas and became chief engineer

858
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:52,001
of the local commercial station there, KLWN.

859
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:58,001
Did that for two years and then went back
to KEWI in Topeka as chief engineer.

860
01:03:59,001 --> 01:04:03,001
Spent the rest of my time
working my way through college

861
01:04:03,001 --> 01:04:05,001
as chief engineer of that station.

862
01:04:05,001 --> 01:04:11,000
Then did broadcast consulting for a while,
build a few stations around the

863
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:16,001
country and ultimately went to
work for the FCC in late 1970.

864
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:20,000
Here you are age 9 as a novice
and then age 10 as a general.

865
01:04:20,001 --> 01:04:25,000
It sounds to me like your parents were
quite supportive of your efforts to become

866
01:04:25,000 --> 01:04:28,001
a radio amateur, even taking you
to Kansas City to get your license

867
01:04:28,001 --> 01:04:30,001
exams. What was their attitude?

868
01:04:30,001 --> 01:04:37,000
Well, supportive is the right answer.
They thought that it was a

869
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:39,000
good thing for me to get involved with.

870
01:04:40,000 --> 01:04:45,001
Frankly, by the time I was 9 I had already
made the decision, I'll come back to

871
01:04:45,001 --> 01:04:49,000
this, but I'd already made the
decision that my career was going

872
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:50,001
to be as an electrical engineer.

873
01:04:51,001 --> 01:04:58,000
They thought that this was a good opportunity
for me to get some experience and

874
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:04,001
also because of the radio club to
get to know people who were working

875
01:05:04,001 --> 01:05:10,001
as engineers and technicians in
radio and television mostly.

876
01:05:11,001 --> 01:05:17,001
They thought it was excellent for me to
start getting involved in these kinds of

877
01:05:17,001 --> 01:05:21,001
activities at that age, given what I
thought I wanted to do with my life.

878
01:05:22,001 --> 01:05:25,001
This was kind of the age of Sputnik as well,
right? So that there was a lot of

879
01:05:25,001 --> 01:05:27,001
excitement about radio in those days?

880
01:05:28,000 --> 01:05:32,000
Absolutely. I had my receiver and
I tuned it in and listened to it.

881
01:05:32,001 --> 01:05:35,000
Okay, so what was the first rig as a novice?

882
01:05:35,000 --> 01:05:42,000
I had a Halecrafters S85 receiver
that my folks bought for me and I

883
01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:48,000
built a novice transmitter out of the
AWRL handbook, because I recall it was

884
01:05:48,000 --> 01:05:53,000
three tubes,
and built it and put it on the air.

885
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:56,001
And my whole novice career,
I made two contacts.

886
01:05:57,000 --> 01:06:04,000
The first contact that I made was
with the FTC monitoring station in

887
01:06:04,000 --> 01:06:07,001
Grand Island,
Nebraska for second harmonic radiation.

888
01:06:08,000 --> 01:06:11,000
I was on 80 meters,
but they heard me a little above 40.

889
01:06:12,000 --> 01:06:17,000
And my second contact was with AWRL
official observer in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

890
01:06:18,000 --> 01:06:22,000
Same situation. I turned the transmitter
off and did not turn it back on.

891
01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:24,000
But still you weren't
discouraged and you went on to

892
01:06:24,000 --> 01:06:26,000
get your general class license.

893
01:06:27,000 --> 01:06:29,001
Absolutely. Yeah, it didn't discourage me,
although I was concerned about going

894
01:06:29,001 --> 01:06:32,000
to jail if I kept the transmitter operational.

895
01:06:32,001 --> 01:06:36,001
So you upgraded to general a year later.
Did the rig improve at that point?

896
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:44,000
Yes. At that time, again, my folks were
supportive and they got a Viking Valiant

897
01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:50,000
transmitter, which was a CWAM transmitter,
about 200 watts.

898
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:55,001
And so I had that and I never
received any more violations.

899
01:06:55,001 --> 01:06:59,001
So it was probably a good thing
to quit using the one I made.

900
01:06:59,001 --> 01:07:02,001
And were you active on the air
and were you on CW or phone?

901
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:05,001
I was on both.
And yes, I was active on the air.

902
01:07:06,000 --> 01:07:13,000
There was a group of teenagers
that started a 40 meter net.

903
01:07:14,000 --> 01:07:15,000
We met every Saturday morning.

904
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:20,000
I checked into that regularly.
Some evenings after school we would

905
01:07:20,000 --> 01:07:21,001
get together and talk.

906
01:07:22,001 --> 01:07:25,001
And I was also active in the local radio club.

907
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:27,001
I'm very active on two meters.

908
01:07:28,001 --> 01:07:35,001
The two meter activity originally in town
was basically simplex with converted

909
01:07:35,001 --> 01:07:40,000
commercial equipment that had been taken
out of service because the equipment had

910
01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:45,000
to be narrow banded from 25 to 15 kilohertz.

911
01:07:45,000 --> 01:07:48,000
So there was a lot of
commercial equipment available.

912
01:07:48,001 --> 01:07:54,001
And then we eventually got a repeater
in town and I was active in that.

913
01:07:56,000 --> 01:08:00,000
So yes,
during most of that time I was pretty active.

914
01:08:00,001 --> 01:08:04,000
This goes to my early interest in
commercial equipment as well. Do you

915
01:08:04,000 --> 01:08:05,001
remember what your two meter rig was?

916
01:08:05,001 --> 01:08:12,000
The first one was the Motorola 80D
which was actually two separate units,

917
01:08:12,001 --> 01:08:16,000
transmitter and receiver separate,
they hooked together with big cables.

918
01:08:16,000 --> 01:08:19,000
And the transmitter had a dyno motor in it.

919
01:08:19,001 --> 01:08:22,001
So when you had it in the car
you used it and pressed the

920
01:08:22,001 --> 01:08:24,001
button, the headlights dimmed.

921
01:08:25,000 --> 01:08:31,001
But it worked.
And I got it on the air and then eventually got

922
01:08:31,001 --> 01:08:33,001
an RCA unit.

923
01:08:34,001 --> 01:08:38,001
And it was surplused from the railroads.

924
01:08:39,001 --> 01:08:42,001
Topeka was a,
well actually the headquarters of the

925
01:08:42,001 --> 01:08:44,001
Acheson Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

926
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:48,001
One of the people in the
club was with the railroad.

927
01:08:49,001 --> 01:08:55,000
And he was able to get most of us in the
club some of this surplus equipment that

928
01:08:55,000 --> 01:08:58,000
they couldn't use anymore
at a very reasonable price.

929
01:08:58,000 --> 01:09:02,000
So got that and had a
couple of units on the air.

930
01:09:02,000 --> 01:09:05,001
Then I used the 80D as a base station
and used the RCA as a mobile.

931
01:09:06,001 --> 01:09:08,001
Continued using that
actually for several years.

932
01:09:09,001 --> 01:09:14,001
You are listening to an interview from
the QSO Today podcast with Ralph Haller

933
01:09:14,001 --> 01:09:18,001
and 4RH conducted by Eric Guth, 4Z1UG.

934
01:09:19,000 --> 01:09:23,000
We thank Eric and the QSO Today podcast
for the use of their program here

935
01:09:23,000 --> 01:09:24,001
on This Week in Amateur Radio.

936
01:09:24,001 --> 01:09:29,000
We will be back with more of the interview
right after we take this pause for

937
01:09:29,000 --> 01:09:31,001
stations along our network to identify.

938
01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:35,000
Serving the amateur radio community
for 22 years and counting.

939
01:09:35,001 --> 01:09:38,001
You are listening to This
Week in Amateur Radio.

940
01:09:59,000 --> 01:10:02,000
Yeah I love that stuff.
I love the smell of that stuff.

941
01:10:02,001 --> 01:10:06,001
I am a little younger than you so I
remember the Motorola T powers. The

942
01:10:06,001 --> 01:10:08,001
GGTs, things like that.

943
01:10:08,001 --> 01:10:13,000
Well the interesting thing about the
80Ds is they had locked tubes which

944
01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:14,001
were pretty interesting.

945
01:10:15,000 --> 01:10:18,001
I don't know if you are familiar with them.
They had little tiny pins.

946
01:10:19,000 --> 01:10:22,001
They looked like regular octal
tubes except for the smaller pins.

947
01:10:22,001 --> 01:10:27,001
When you pressed them into the
socket they really snapped in.

948
01:10:27,001 --> 01:10:32,001
I guess they were made because they were
concerned in a mobile environment that

949
01:10:32,001 --> 01:10:36,000
if they didn't have that the tubes
would fall out with the vibration.

950
01:10:36,000 --> 01:10:38,000
That was the only reason I could
figure why they made them.

951
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:44,001
It was interesting units and
certainly gave me a lot of

952
01:10:44,001 --> 01:10:50,001
experience in terms of converting them
from the commercial frequencies down to

953
01:10:50,001 --> 01:10:53,000
the amateur frequencies,
getting them on the air.

954
01:10:54,000 --> 01:11:01,000
A lot of my interest in amateur radio
has really been more on the technical

955
01:11:01,000 --> 01:11:06,000
side learning about electronics
more so than communications.

956
01:11:06,001 --> 01:11:13,000
It's okay to talk and I don't have any
problem with that but my real interest has

957
01:11:13,000 --> 01:11:15,000
always been more on the technical side of it.

958
01:11:16,000 --> 01:11:18,001
I understand that completely.
I think that's what I do as well.

959
01:11:19,000 --> 01:11:24,000
Let me ask you, as a 14 year old first
class radio telephone licensee and

960
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:29,001
engineer at a radio station, how were you
regarded by adults who were your peers

961
01:11:29,001 --> 01:11:32,001
at the radio station as a young engineer there?

962
01:11:32,001 --> 01:11:39,000
I was rather fortunate in that
the station that I worked at was

963
01:11:39,000 --> 01:11:40,001
a top 40 station.

964
01:11:42,000 --> 01:11:47,001
The majority of the people working
there were relatively young.

965
01:11:48,001 --> 01:11:52,001
Certainly there were only a few
people that were over 30, the

966
01:11:52,001 --> 01:11:54,000
owner, one of the engineers.

967
01:11:55,000 --> 01:12:01,001
Most of the other engineers were actually
college students that were going to the

968
01:12:01,001 --> 01:12:06,000
University of Kansas and working at the
radio station on a part time basis.

969
01:12:07,000 --> 01:12:13,000
It's not like I was 14 and working
with a group of 50 year olds.

970
01:12:13,001 --> 01:12:18,000
I was working with a group of 20
year olds for the most part, 18 to

971
01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:20,000
25 for the most part.

972
01:12:20,001 --> 01:12:26,001
It's not like I was that much different
in age and I certainly never felt that

973
01:12:26,001 --> 01:12:32,000
there was any kind of animosity
about my age and my working there.

974
01:12:32,001 --> 01:12:35,001
I was accepted and enjoyed it.

975
01:12:36,000 --> 01:12:40,000
You received a degree from
the University of Kansas?

976
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:44,000
Yes,
Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering.

977
01:12:44,001 --> 01:12:46,001
Did you go on for advanced degrees after that?

978
01:12:46,001 --> 01:12:52,000
I did some work towards an advanced
degree but actually I never

979
01:12:52,000 --> 01:12:54,000
completed an advanced degree.

980
01:12:54,001 --> 01:12:59,001
You mentioned earlier that you ended up
at the FCC. How did you begin at the FCC?

981
01:13:01,000 --> 01:13:02,000
Well, it was a little bit by accident.

982
01:13:03,000 --> 01:13:08,001
After I left the radio station as chief
engineer, I went to work for a broadcast

983
01:13:08,001 --> 01:13:15,000
consultant in town and we built radio stations,
mostly in the Midwest.

984
01:13:15,001 --> 01:13:17,001
[...] also did maintenance on them.

985
01:13:18,000 --> 01:13:21,000
One of the things we had to do in those
days when you were going to put a new

986
01:13:21,000 --> 01:13:27,000
station on there, you actually had to go
to the FCC field office and you had to

987
01:13:27,000 --> 01:13:32,001
identify any other FCC license
facility within two miles

988
01:13:32,001 --> 01:13:34,000
of your proposed location.

989
01:13:34,000 --> 01:13:40,001
I was at the Kansas City FCC office
one day and I was going through,

990
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:47,000
in those days it was actually note cards
to try and locate other stations for a

991
01:13:47,000 --> 01:13:48,001
new station that we were putting on.

992
01:13:50,001 --> 01:13:56,000
The engineer in charge there, who I got
to know, who by the way is the person who

993
01:13:56,000 --> 01:14:00,001
failed me in my first hand exam,
but I got to know him quite well actually.

994
01:14:00,001 --> 01:14:06,000
He came in and said, you know, we're
hiring right now. Have you ever thought of

995
01:14:06,000 --> 01:14:07,001
possibly working for the FCC?

996
01:14:09,001 --> 01:14:16,000
I said, well, not really. I had never
really thought about it. He said, well, why

997
01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:17,001
don't you fill out this application?

998
01:14:19,000 --> 01:14:23,001
We'll just send it in and maybe
they'll want to hire you.

999
01:14:23,001 --> 01:14:28,001
I recommend working for the FCC.
I've been here several years and

1000
01:14:28,001 --> 01:14:30,000
I think it's a great place to work.

1001
01:14:31,000 --> 01:14:36,001
So I said, fine. I filled it out.
I heard nothing for several

1002
01:14:36,001 --> 01:14:38,000
months, probably six months.

1003
01:14:39,000 --> 01:14:46,000
All of a sudden I got this letter in
the mail from the FCC and I opened it

1004
01:14:46,000 --> 01:14:51,000
up and looked at it and it was
travel orders to go to Los

1005
01:14:51,000 --> 01:14:52,001
Angeles, move to Los Angeles.

1006
01:14:54,000 --> 01:14:57,001
But nothing in there actually
indicating that I had been hired, just

1007
01:14:57,001 --> 01:14:59,001
travel orders to go to Los Angeles.

1008
01:15:00,001 --> 01:15:05,000
So I called up and they said, oh yeah,
nobody told you the Los Angeles

1009
01:15:05,000 --> 01:15:07,000
office wants you to come to work for them.

1010
01:15:07,001 --> 01:15:13,001
And I said, well, no, nobody told me.
Well, do you want the job? And I thought

1011
01:15:13,001 --> 01:15:16,001
about it and I said, yeah, yeah, I do.
I'll take it.

1012
01:15:17,000 --> 01:15:23,001
And so my wife and I packed up
and moved to Los Angeles and

1013
01:15:23,001 --> 01:15:27,001
started working in the field office
there and just thoroughly enjoyed it.

1014
01:15:27,001 --> 01:15:34,000
It's a decision that it's one of those
pivotal decisions in one's life that it

1015
01:15:34,000 --> 01:15:38,001
was the right decision at the
time and it was a decision that

1016
01:15:38,001 --> 01:15:40,001
affected the rest of my life.

1017
01:15:41,000 --> 01:15:46,000
So, yeah, it was by accident sort of
that I got there, but I'm glad I did it.

1018
01:15:46,001 --> 01:15:49,000
And you were in the Los Angeles
field office from what years?

1019
01:15:49,000 --> 01:15:53,000
Late 70 through 76, mid 76.

1020
01:15:53,001 --> 01:15:58,000
I'm sure that there's a number of hams
listening to the podcast that probably

1021
01:15:58,000 --> 01:16:02,000
took their amateur radio
exam under your proctorship.

1022
01:16:02,001 --> 01:16:08,001
Undoubtedly true because not only did
I give exams in Los Angeles, we had

1023
01:16:08,001 --> 01:16:10,001
Arizona as part of our territory.

1024
01:16:10,001 --> 01:16:17,000
So I gave exams in Phoenix and Tucson,
and we also gave exams

1025
01:16:17,000 --> 01:16:19,001
in Bakersfield, California.

1026
01:16:20,001 --> 01:16:26,000
So anybody that took exams in any of those
places during those years, there's a

1027
01:16:26,000 --> 01:16:28,001
reasonable chance that I gave them the exam.

1028
01:16:29,001 --> 01:16:36,000
And if they took a commercial exam,
there's a- no matter whether I gave the exam

1029
01:16:36,000 --> 01:16:40,001
or not, there's a reasonable chance that
my signature appears as the issuing

1030
01:16:40,001 --> 01:16:42,000
officer on their license.

1031
01:16:43,000 --> 01:16:47,001
I was quite involved in that,
although that was really only one aspect of the

1032
01:16:47,001 --> 01:16:54,000
job, but gave commercial radio telegraph,
radio telephone, all the amateur exams.

1033
01:16:54,000 --> 01:16:59,001
And one of the things that we had to do
as an examiner is we had to know Morse

1034
01:16:59,001 --> 01:17:05,000
code at 25 words per minute and pass it,
our own test at 25 words per minute.

1035
01:17:05,001 --> 01:17:12,000
So it required knowing Morse code and
basically required, well, knowledge of the

1036
01:17:12,000 --> 01:17:14,001
exams, the content and all.

1037
01:17:15,000 --> 01:17:20,001
So presumably everybody that gave FCC
exams was able to pass FCC exams.

1038
01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:25,000
Now, the San Diego office was that
handled by somebody else? I remember that

1039
01:17:25,000 --> 01:17:27,000
there was an FCC office in San Diego.

1040
01:17:28,000 --> 01:17:33,000
Clarence Spillman was the engineer in
charge of that office at the time, and he

1041
01:17:33,000 --> 01:17:39,000
was- that's actually a sub-office of
the LA office, so he reported to the

1042
01:17:39,000 --> 01:17:43,000
engineer in charge in Los Angeles
who reported to the Field

1043
01:17:43,000 --> 01:17:45,000
Operations Bureau in D.C.

1044
01:17:45,000 --> 01:17:49,000
Well, that's where I took my general class
exam. We were worried about parking in

1045
01:17:49,000 --> 01:17:53,000
Los Angeles at the time,
if you can believe that, in 1973.

1046
01:17:54,000 --> 01:17:59,000
Let's move on. I remember in the 80s when
cellular telephony was beginning, and I

1047
01:17:59,000 --> 01:18:02,000
was involved in the two-way radio industry
at the time, and so therefore, you

1048
01:18:02,000 --> 01:18:04,001
know, I was following cellular telephony.

1049
01:18:04,001 --> 01:18:10,000
And there was this idea that somehow
cellular was going to be different than PCS,

1050
01:18:10,001 --> 01:18:14,000
that for some reason,
these would be two different services. Maybe

1051
01:18:14,000 --> 01:18:15,001
PCS was going to have handsets.

1052
01:18:16,000 --> 01:18:20,001
But it's my understanding that in 1994,
you were appointed by then the FCC

1053
01:18:20,001 --> 01:18:25,001
chairman, Reed Hunt,
to lead the FCC's task force on PCS issues.

1054
01:18:26,001 --> 01:18:29,001
Now, what happened to PCS,
and why don't we hear about it now?

1055
01:18:30,000 --> 01:18:36,001
Well, it's still there. It's just mostly
a terminology thing. Technically,

1056
01:18:37,000 --> 01:18:43,001
cellular radio operates in the 800 MHz band,
and PCS operates

1057
01:18:43,001 --> 01:18:49,000
in the 2 GHz band, 1.8, 1.9, 2,

1058
01:18:49,001 --> 01:18:51,001
now up in 5 GHz.

1059
01:18:52,000 --> 01:18:59,000
But PCS was intended to do two things.
It was intended to use

1060
01:18:59,000 --> 01:19:05,001
higher frequencies, where you could
have more bandwidth, and it also

1061
01:19:05,001 --> 01:19:12,000
was intended to provide, as a result,
I should say, to provide more capacity

1062
01:19:12,000 --> 01:19:16,000
for particularly data kinds of services.

1063
01:19:16,000 --> 01:19:22,001
And so there's not a lot of difference
between cellular and PCS, primary

1064
01:19:22,001 --> 01:19:28,001
differences being the frequencies upon
which they operate and the bandwidth of

1065
01:19:28,001 --> 01:19:31,001
the modulation technologies that are used.

1066
01:19:31,001 --> 01:19:38,001
Cellular tended to be, at the time,
basically traditional FM,

1067
01:19:39,000 --> 01:19:45,001
whereas the PCS services
were moving more towards a

1068
01:19:45,001 --> 01:19:48,001
spread spectrum sort of technology.

1069
01:19:49,000 --> 01:19:55,001
So, again, to the end user,
there's probably not a lot of difference, and

1070
01:19:55,001 --> 01:20:01,000
there's no reason that an end user
should know any difference in terms of

1071
01:20:01,000 --> 01:20:03,000
how they use the equipment.

1072
01:20:03,001 --> 01:20:10,000
But from a technology standpoint, PCS,
I would have to say, is like a more

1073
01:20:10,000 --> 01:20:12,000
advanced cellular system.

1074
01:21:02,000 --> 01:21:07,000
So I remember in the time, and I get it,
I get the idea that in those days we

1075
01:21:07,000 --> 01:21:12,001
were evolving out of VHF, UHF, mobile
telephone services that were quite elite.

1076
01:21:12,001 --> 01:21:16,001
Rich people and business
executives might have had those

1077
01:21:16,001 --> 01:21:18,001
telephones. As you say, they were FM.

1078
01:21:19,000 --> 01:21:22,000
And I remember the first cellular
telephones that were marketed

1079
01:21:22,000 --> 01:21:24,000
were also FM phones.

1080
01:21:24,000 --> 01:21:27,001
So I got this idea, at least it seemed to
me at the time, that it's possible that

1081
01:21:27,001 --> 01:21:31,000
in those days people would
have two wireless devices.

1082
01:21:31,000 --> 01:21:36,001
One, a cellular phone, and perhaps as PCS
evolved, that that would be like a data

1083
01:21:36,001 --> 01:21:40,000
handset if we were even thinking
in those terms at that time.

1084
01:21:40,000 --> 01:21:44,001
Was the FCC under your task force,
were you guys thinking in those terms at the

1085
01:21:44,001 --> 01:21:48,001
time that possibly there could be
something like an iPhone, a computer

1086
01:21:48,001 --> 01:21:50,000
that people carry in their hand?

1087
01:21:51,000 --> 01:21:58,000
Yes, absolutely. That was the idea to
even begin providing video services,

1088
01:21:58,000 --> 01:22:02,000
which seemed almost
impossible to think about it.

1089
01:22:02,000 --> 01:22:07,001
But that was the idea to provide
advanced services like that.

1090
01:22:08,001 --> 01:22:14,000
And in fact, we held hearings to
talk about what PCS could provide.

1091
01:22:14,000 --> 01:22:20,000
And I will never forget that one of
the people who appeared before us

1092
01:22:20,000 --> 01:22:27,000
in the hearing said, you know,
this is going to evolve into

1093
01:22:27,000 --> 01:22:33,001
something that ultimately is going
to be implanted, and you won't

1094
01:22:33,001 --> 01:22:35,000
even be carrying a device.

1095
01:22:35,001 --> 01:22:40,000
And that's always hit me as
that we're not there yet.

1096
01:22:40,001 --> 01:22:47,001
But it seems like as things progress,
we're getting more and more to the point

1097
01:22:47,001 --> 01:22:53,000
of where devices are becoming very much in tune

1098
01:22:53,000 --> 01:22:55,000
with human activity.

1099
01:22:56,000 --> 01:23:02,000
And I think back to I wonder if there
will be a day when we don't really

1100
01:23:02,000 --> 01:23:04,000
talk about devices anymore.

1101
01:23:04,001 --> 01:23:09,001
We just we think about communicating
and the device takes over automatically

1102
01:23:09,001 --> 01:23:11,001
and connects us.

1103
01:23:12,001 --> 01:23:14,000
That's where he was headed.

1104
01:23:14,001 --> 01:23:15,001
I don't know.

1105
01:23:15,001 --> 01:23:17,000
I'm still a skeptic on that.

1106
01:23:17,001 --> 01:23:21,001
But it's certainly a vision that
is interesting to think about.

1107
01:23:21,001 --> 01:23:25,001
Probably the reason we don't think
or hear about PCS now is that

1108
01:23:25,001 --> 01:23:27,000
all of these lines have blurred.

1109
01:23:27,001 --> 01:23:33,001
And so we now carry one device, I think
with the recapturing of analog television

1110
01:23:33,001 --> 01:23:39,000
channels that created some vast open
spaces for these data networks as well.

1111
01:23:40,000 --> 01:23:41,000
Yes, definitely.

1112
01:23:41,001 --> 01:23:47,001
The spectrum is definitely becoming more
available for these kinds of services as

1113
01:23:47,001 --> 01:23:49,001
a result of the repacking of TV.

1114
01:23:50,001 --> 01:23:56,001
Though the services are also becoming
more efficient, they're able to get more

1115
01:23:56,001 --> 01:24:01,000
and more data into a particular bandwidth.

1116
01:24:02,000 --> 01:24:07,000
And so you've got both things happening,
the FCC making more spectrum available

1117
01:24:07,000 --> 01:24:14,000
and the technology being more efficient
in transmission of information.

1118
01:24:14,000 --> 01:24:21,000
So you take the two and we've come to
a point where we can get a whole lot

1119
01:24:21,000 --> 01:24:24,001
of data over a relatively small
amount of spectrum anymore.

1120
01:24:25,000 --> 01:24:26,000
Yeah, it's quite amazing.

1121
01:24:26,000 --> 01:24:31,001
I think the first computer I ever
programmed was an IBM 370 and that took an

1122
01:24:31,001 --> 01:24:34,000
entire floor of a building at school.

1123
01:24:35,000 --> 01:24:40,000
And now I think I'm carrying in my pocket
probably 100 buildings of IBM 370s.

1124
01:24:40,000 --> 01:24:41,000
It's really quite amazing.

1125
01:24:41,000 --> 01:24:48,000
It is. I go back to my college days and
to program a computer, we had to sit down

1126
01:24:48,000 --> 01:24:53,001
at a key punch machine and punch a deck
of cards and then take them to the

1127
01:24:53,001 --> 01:24:55,001
computer center, hand them in.

1128
01:24:56,000 --> 01:24:59,001
They would run them overnight and we
get the results back the next day.

1129
01:25:00,001 --> 01:25:05,001
Think about that to where we are now
where you sit down in front of a computer

1130
01:25:05,001 --> 01:25:07,001
and everything is instantaneous.

1131
01:25:07,001 --> 01:25:09,000
It's been a tremendous change.

1132
01:25:09,000 --> 01:25:14,000
You're a little bit older than I am,
but I also started on cards, but we could

1133
01:25:14,000 --> 01:25:17,001
get ours processed in the time it would
take to go buy coffee and drink it.

1134
01:25:18,000 --> 01:25:19,001
Then you go back and you get your report,
right?

1135
01:25:20,000 --> 01:25:24,001
And you look and you'd see that you
had a syntax error on card number 50.

1136
01:25:25,001 --> 01:25:30,000
And so then you'd have to do the whole
project over, fix the card, push the deck

1137
01:25:30,000 --> 01:25:32,001
back in and then go get another cup of coffee.

1138
01:25:33,000 --> 01:25:35,000
It made me learn to hate computers early on.

1139
01:25:35,001 --> 01:25:37,000
That's exactly what happened to me.

1140
01:25:37,000 --> 01:25:41,000
There wasn't instant gratification in
those days and the people that stayed in

1141
01:25:41,000 --> 01:25:45,000
computing, God bless them,
because it's why we're where we're at now.

1142
01:25:45,000 --> 01:25:47,001
But I think it was an early
dropout to computing because

1143
01:25:47,001 --> 01:25:49,001
of the time it took to get a reply.

1144
01:25:50,000 --> 01:25:50,001
Exactly.

1145
01:25:51,000 --> 01:25:57,000
And I was very resistant on getting
involved in computers again.

1146
01:25:57,000 --> 01:25:58,001
I really didn't want to do it.

1147
01:25:58,001 --> 01:26:05,000
And ultimately I had to and things had
changed a lot by then, and it was a lot

1148
01:26:05,000 --> 01:26:11,000
more user friendly, which was okay,
although I still find them pretty frustrating

1149
01:26:11,000 --> 01:26:15,000
when they don't work and you have
to troubleshoot what's wrong.

1150
01:26:15,001 --> 01:26:19,000
But that being said,
I don't see how we would get along in

1151
01:26:19,000 --> 01:26:21,000
today's environment without them.

1152
01:26:21,001 --> 01:26:24,001
How did your role at the FCC,
how did that evolve after that?

1153
01:26:24,001 --> 01:26:31,000
When I left Los Angeles in 76, I went to D.
C. and my first job for a couple of

1154
01:26:31,000 --> 01:26:37,001
years was in the inspections branch where
all the field offices, I mean in the

1155
01:26:37,001 --> 01:26:42,000
investigations branch, all the field
offices would send their investigations,

1156
01:26:42,001 --> 01:26:45,000
usually interference or unlicensed activity.

1157
01:26:45,000 --> 01:26:51,000
And we would review the reports that
came in and decide if there should be

1158
01:26:51,000 --> 01:26:56,000
fine or what actions should
be taken or if the case was

1159
01:26:56,000 --> 01:26:58,000
resolved and should just be closed.

1160
01:26:59,000 --> 01:27:03,001
And then I moved from that to chief
of the monitoring station network.

1161
01:27:04,000 --> 01:27:08,001
We had in that time 13 monitoring
stations around the country.

1162
01:27:09,001 --> 01:27:12,000
One of them in Puerto Rico, one in Hawaii.

1163
01:27:12,000 --> 01:27:15,001
And I was in charge of that
for a couple of years.

1164
01:27:16,000 --> 01:27:23,000
Then in 1980, I went to the FCC's
laboratory in Columbia, Maryland,

1165
01:27:23,000 --> 01:27:27,001
and I was in charge of research
at the FCC for three years.

1166
01:27:28,000 --> 01:27:34,001
In 1983, I went back to D.C.
and I worked in the policy and rules division

1167
01:27:34,001 --> 01:27:36,001
of the broadcast bureau.

1168
01:27:36,001 --> 01:27:42,001
And then from that, in 1986, I went to
the private radio bureau and spent the

1169
01:27:42,001 --> 01:27:46,001
rest of my career there and
ultimately as chief of that bureau.

1170
01:27:47,001 --> 01:27:54,000
And that is the bureau that licenses almost
everything that's non-broadcast, non

1171
01:27:54,000 --> 01:28:00,000
-cable, and non-common carrier,
which means police, fire, amateur,

1172
01:28:00,001 --> 01:28:06,000
boats, aircraft, anything that-
think of the two-way services.

1173
01:28:06,001 --> 01:28:10,001
And basically it licensed all of
the two-way kinds of services.

1174
01:28:11,001 --> 01:28:16,000
Now were FCC monitoring stations in
those days manned by human beings or

1175
01:28:16,000 --> 01:28:17,001
were those like remote monitoring?

1176
01:28:18,000 --> 01:28:20,000
They were all staffed 24 hours a day.

1177
01:28:20,001 --> 01:28:24,000
I remember that there was one in Southern
California, right? Maybe in Santa Ana

1178
01:28:24,000 --> 01:28:25,001
or in Orange County somewhere?

1179
01:28:26,000 --> 01:28:27,000
Santa Ana, you're right.

1180
01:28:27,001 --> 01:28:31,000
Those are interesting places.
How do they do it now? Is there FCC monitoring

1181
01:28:31,000 --> 01:28:32,001
stations around the country still?

1182
01:28:32,001 --> 01:28:37,000
I'm not an expert in what
they're actually doing now.

1183
01:28:38,000 --> 01:28:43,000
I believe that some of those
stations remain open and they're

1184
01:28:43,000 --> 01:28:44,001
operated by remote control.

1185
01:28:46,000 --> 01:28:51,001
And to the extent that they still have
field offices, I believe the field offices

1186
01:28:51,001 --> 01:28:58,000
have at least VHF, UHF direction
finding capability, and some remote

1187
01:28:58,000 --> 01:29:03,000
locations that they either dial into
or can access through the internet.

1188
01:29:04,000 --> 01:29:09,001
But I'm not directly involved with that
and don't really know what the current

1189
01:29:09,001 --> 01:29:13,001
configuration is, but I think it's
something similar to what I just described.

1190
01:29:14,000 --> 01:29:18,000
When you were running the private radio bureau,
how important were amateur radio

1191
01:29:18,000 --> 01:29:23,000
official observers to helping
you keep at least the

1192
01:29:23,000 --> 01:29:24,001
amateur radio portion of it clean?

1193
01:29:24,001 --> 01:29:30,001
I didn't really ever have
any direct interaction, so I

1194
01:29:30,001 --> 01:29:34,000
can't really give you an
answer to that question.

1195
01:29:34,001 --> 01:29:36,001
I certainly was aware they were out there.

1196
01:29:37,001 --> 01:29:43,000
I knew that they were doing a
job to help keep the amateur

1197
01:29:43,000 --> 01:29:44,001
radio service in check.

1198
01:29:45,001 --> 01:29:52,000
But I never really received reports
from the AWRL on how many people

1199
01:29:52,000 --> 01:29:55,000
they would send notices to and all.

1200
01:29:55,001 --> 01:30:00,001
I knew they were there and I knew
they were doing good, but I couldn't

1201
01:30:00,001 --> 01:30:02,000
quantify it in any way.

1202
01:30:02,001 --> 01:30:07,001
You are listening to an interview from
the QSO Today podcast with Ralph Haller

1203
01:30:07,001 --> 01:30:11,001
and 4RH conducted by Eric Guth for Z1UG.

1204
01:30:11,001 --> 01:30:16,000
We thank Eric and the QSO Today podcast
for the use of their program here

1205
01:30:16,000 --> 01:30:17,001
on This Week in Amateur Radio.

1206
01:30:18,000 --> 01:30:22,000
We will be back with more of the interview
right after we take this pause for

1207
01:30:22,000 --> 01:30:24,001
stations along our network to identify.

1208
01:30:25,000 --> 01:30:29,000
Serving the amateur radio community for
22 years and counting. You are listening

1209
01:30:29,000 --> 01:30:31,001
to This Week in Amateur Radio.

1210
01:30:52,000 --> 01:30:58,000
Can you recall any major enforcements
against an amateur radio operator during

1211
01:30:58,000 --> 01:31:02,001
your tenure there at the FCC that
perhaps is quite memorable to you?

1212
01:31:02,001 --> 01:31:08,001
I really don't want to go into specific cases,
but I would say the majority

1213
01:31:08,001 --> 01:31:15,001
of issues that became problematic
were with amateurs who

1214
01:31:15,001 --> 01:31:19,000
were intent on causing interference.

1215
01:31:19,000 --> 01:31:25,000
For one reason or another, they were
either just cantankerous or they would get

1216
01:31:25,000 --> 01:31:27,000
upset with somebody else.

1217
01:31:28,000 --> 01:31:33,000
Trying to find and resolve
interference issues was a problem.

1218
01:31:33,000 --> 01:31:39,001
Some amateurs also would
get involved in setting up

1219
01:31:39,001 --> 01:31:42,000
unlicensed broadcast stations.

1220
01:31:42,001 --> 01:31:48,000
We would wind up having to find those
stations and close them down and then take

1221
01:31:48,000 --> 01:31:50,001
action against their amateur radio license.

1222
01:31:51,001 --> 01:31:55,000
That was primarily interference issues.

1223
01:31:57,001 --> 01:32:04,001
Occasionally, we would find somebody
operating illegally in some way overpower.

1224
01:32:05,000 --> 01:32:08,000
That tended not to be a great
problem in the amateur service.

1225
01:32:08,001 --> 01:32:11,001
That was much more a problem
in the Citizens Ban service

1226
01:32:11,001 --> 01:32:13,000
where they were limited to 5 watts.

1227
01:32:14,000 --> 01:32:18,000
People would go in and find
them running 300 or 1,000.

1228
01:32:19,001 --> 01:32:24,001
Most of the enforcement was
much more on the Citizens Ban

1229
01:32:24,001 --> 01:32:26,001
side than the amateur side.

1230
01:32:27,000 --> 01:32:32,000
In the end, did the FCC ever create some
spectrum for would-be broadcasters?

1231
01:32:32,001 --> 01:32:35,001
I remember pirate broadcasters
in Southern California.

1232
01:32:36,000 --> 01:32:37,001
I was never one, but I knew some.

1233
01:32:38,000 --> 01:32:42,000
It seemed to me that there was this
compulsion to play records on the air.

1234
01:32:42,001 --> 01:32:43,001
They couldn't help it.

1235
01:32:44,000 --> 01:32:47,000
Did the FCC ever make some kind
of spectrum available for this?

1236
01:32:47,000 --> 01:32:48,000
Yes and no.

1237
01:32:48,001 --> 01:32:54,000
Under Part 15 of the FCC rules,
which is the part

1238
01:32:54,000 --> 01:33:00,001
that regulates all of the unlicensed activity,
there are provisions

1239
01:33:00,001 --> 01:33:06,001
for low-power broadcast stations,
both in the AM

1240
01:33:06,001 --> 01:33:08,000
band and the FM band.

1241
01:33:09,000 --> 01:33:14,000
There are limits on power and
limits on antenna lengths.

1242
01:33:14,000 --> 01:33:21,000
If someone complies with those requirements,
they can put a station on the air,

1243
01:33:21,000 --> 01:33:25,000
but it doesn't have a particularly long range.

1244
01:33:26,001 --> 01:33:31,001
Yes, there is a provision whereby
you can do it, but you can't

1245
01:33:31,001 --> 01:33:33,000
serve a whole town with it.

1246
01:33:33,001 --> 01:33:35,001
Are you still with the FCC
now or are you retired?

1247
01:33:36,000 --> 01:33:37,000
What's your current status?

1248
01:33:37,000 --> 01:33:44,000
I left the FCC in 1996, and I became a

1249
01:33:44,000 --> 01:33:48,001
consultant primarily in the land mobile
services, police, fire, emergency,

1250
01:33:49,000 --> 01:33:55,000
medical, and the business radio services
and taxi cabs, helping people design

1251
01:33:55,000 --> 01:33:58,000
radio systems and get licensed by the FCC.

1252
01:33:58,000 --> 01:34:05,000
I did that until 2012, at which time I took

1253
01:34:05,000 --> 01:34:08,001
a position in frequency coordination.

1254
01:34:08,001 --> 01:34:14,000
The FCC certifies frequency coordinators
in the various public safety

1255
01:34:14,000 --> 01:34:15,001
and business radio services.

1256
01:34:16,001 --> 01:34:22,001
I started working for the Forestry
Conservation Communications Association, which

1257
01:34:22,001 --> 01:34:26,000
is one of the certified
public safety coordinators.

1258
01:34:27,000 --> 01:34:31,000
I continue to do that now,
although I'm just part-time now.

1259
01:34:31,001 --> 01:34:36,000
I'm general manager of that operation,
but I've gone to part-time.

1260
01:34:36,000 --> 01:34:41,001
I'm basically about 90 percent retired today,
but I have not been with the FCC

1261
01:34:41,001 --> 01:34:44,001
for 20-some years.

1262
01:34:45,001 --> 01:34:50,000
Ralph, in 2009, you received the Barry
Goldwater Amateur Radio Award for unique

1263
01:34:50,000 --> 01:34:52,000
contributions in the field of amateur radio.

1264
01:34:52,000 --> 01:34:56,000
What are those unique contributions that
you made to the field of amateur radio?

1265
01:34:56,001 --> 01:34:59,001
Well, I was very honored to receive that award.

1266
01:35:00,000 --> 01:35:05,000
I had the great opportunity to meet Barry
Goldwater since he was from Arizona,

1267
01:35:05,000 --> 01:35:08,000
and that was part of our district
when I was in the field office.

1268
01:35:08,001 --> 01:35:12,001
But I was very honored to receive the award,
and there were perhaps

1269
01:35:12,001 --> 01:35:14,000
a number of things that went into it.

1270
01:35:14,000 --> 01:35:17,000
It's more like a lifetime achievement award,
I guess.

1271
01:35:17,000 --> 01:35:23,001
But some of the specific things that
at least I'm proud of is I implemented

1272
01:35:23,001 --> 01:35:28,000
the Vanity Call Sign System while I
was chief of the private radio bureau.

1273
01:35:29,000 --> 01:35:34,000
I also was instrumental in
the first volunteer amateur

1274
01:35:34,000 --> 01:35:36,000
exams at Dayton, Ohio.

1275
01:35:36,001 --> 01:35:43,001
We worked with the local radio club,
and we actually went out there, gave

1276
01:35:43,001 --> 01:35:48,001
the exams to the volunteers,
let them give the exams, and we sort

1277
01:35:48,001 --> 01:35:50,001
of monitored the whole thing.

1278
01:35:51,000 --> 01:35:55,000
And from that,
proceeded into the volunteer exam program

1279
01:35:55,000 --> 01:35:56,001
that we have in place today.

1280
01:35:57,000 --> 01:36:03,001
I was also instrumental in
getting frequency coordination

1281
01:36:03,001 --> 01:36:10,001
for amateur repeaters as part
of the VHF-UHF operations

1282
01:36:10,001 --> 01:36:16,000
for amateur radio, which at one point
there were a lot of repeater wars, people

1283
01:36:16,000 --> 01:36:20,000
saying, this is my frequency,
and somebody else saying it's my frequency.

1284
01:36:20,001 --> 01:36:25,000
And getting frequency coordination
into amateur radio I think was

1285
01:36:25,000 --> 01:36:26,001
a big step forward.

1286
01:36:27,001 --> 01:36:34,001
And I also felt that the Morse code
requirement had kind of become obsolete,

1287
01:36:34,001 --> 01:36:41,001
and so started the process of
reducing and eliminating Morse code

1288
01:36:41,001 --> 01:36:43,001
requirements to become an amateur.

1289
01:36:44,000 --> 01:36:50,001
So those are all sort of things that I
hope went into the Barry Goldwater Award.

1290
01:36:50,001 --> 01:36:54,001
They never tell you for sure, but I think
those are some of the things that have

1291
01:36:54,001 --> 01:37:00,000
had a pretty big impact on amateur radio
and I think a positive impact on amateur

1292
01:37:00,000 --> 01:37:05,000
radio, both in letting people get
their own call signs and in also

1293
01:37:05,000 --> 01:37:07,000
encouraging people to come in.

1294
01:37:07,001 --> 01:37:11,000
I think Morse code was a big detriment
for a while to people coming in

1295
01:37:11,000 --> 01:37:12,001
to be amateurs.

1296
01:37:13,000 --> 01:37:17,000
So those are some of the things, at least,
that I've done over my career that I

1297
01:37:17,000 --> 01:37:19,000
think are important to amateur radio.

1298
01:37:19,001 --> 01:37:23,000
Well, you know, what's interesting about
the loss of the Morse code requirement,

1299
01:37:23,000 --> 01:37:27,000
I actually think it was a good idea,
but it appears to be now that there's a

1300
01:37:27,000 --> 01:37:30,000
higher percentage of amateur radio
operators who are now operating

1301
01:37:30,000 --> 01:37:31,001
Morse code than there was before.

1302
01:37:32,001 --> 01:37:34,001
I think that's kind of a funny thing, actually.

1303
01:37:35,001 --> 01:37:38,001
When you're required,
I think it's human nature, when you're required

1304
01:37:38,001 --> 01:37:40,000
to do something, you resist it.

1305
01:37:40,001 --> 01:37:45,000
But when you're allowed to do it,
if you want to, you're more inclined to do it.

1306
01:37:45,001 --> 01:37:51,001
And I think that may be just
something related to human nature.

1307
01:37:51,001 --> 01:37:57,000
I have a theory on it. I've interviewed
a lot of hams. Your episode is 328, and

1308
01:37:57,000 --> 01:38:02,000
so I've interviewed a lot of hams who
operate Morse code and continue to operate

1309
01:38:02,000 --> 01:38:04,000
Morse code or have gone to Morse code.

1310
01:38:05,000 --> 01:38:09,000
And I think that part of the idea that
they want to do this now is because I

1311
01:38:09,000 --> 01:38:14,000
think we're so inundated with visual and
audible information that just sitting

1312
01:38:14,000 --> 01:38:20,001
down for an hour and having a conversation
on CW, there's some kind of zen about

1313
01:38:20,001 --> 01:38:24,000
it, and there's some kind of meditation
that goes with that, that's kind of a

1314
01:38:24,000 --> 01:38:28,001
break from the routine where we're just
completely bombarded all day long with

1315
01:38:28,001 --> 01:38:33,001
news and information and noise and everything.
What do you think about that?

1316
01:38:34,000 --> 01:38:40,001
I think you've hit on something because
when you're operating on Morse code, it

1317
01:38:40,001 --> 01:38:42,001
requires a full commitment.

1318
01:38:44,000 --> 01:38:49,000
And there are a few people that can
operate a key and listen to what's coming

1319
01:38:49,000 --> 01:38:52,000
over the air and still talk
to somebody in the room.

1320
01:38:52,000 --> 01:38:55,001
I know one of them who I was
always amazed could do it.

1321
01:38:55,001 --> 01:39:00,001
But for most of us, if you're on Morse code,
it's a full-time commitment to carry

1322
01:39:00,001 --> 01:39:06,000
on that conversation and completely
blanks your mind of all the other stuff.

1323
01:39:06,001 --> 01:39:09,000
And I think it can be a very relaxing activity.

1324
01:39:09,000 --> 01:39:13,000
There should be another book at some point.
I'm sure someone will write it like

1325
01:39:13,000 --> 01:39:16,000
zen and the art of CW operation.

1326
01:39:16,000 --> 01:39:17,000
I like it.

1327
01:39:40,000 --> 01:39:44,000
Serving the amateur radio community for
22 years and counting. You are listening

1328
01:39:44,000 --> 01:39:46,001
to This Week in Amateur Radio.

1329
01:40:06,001 --> 01:40:08,001
What's the current rig?

1330
01:40:09,000 --> 01:40:14,001
The current one is pretty small. I just have

1331
01:40:14,001 --> 01:40:16,001
an ICOM mobile.

1332
01:40:17,000 --> 01:40:24,000
I have a dual band, 2 meter 440 unit
in the car. And use it when I'm in

1333
01:40:24,000 --> 01:40:27,000
the car. I don't actually have
anything set up at the house.

1334
01:40:28,000 --> 01:40:34,000
I'm in a deed restricted
community and that limits what

1335
01:40:34,000 --> 01:40:35,001
I can actually do here.

1336
01:40:36,000 --> 01:40:43,000
So I'm sort of more content with just the
mobile operation and not particularly

1337
01:40:43,000 --> 01:40:45,001
active on the air these days, I have to admit.

1338
01:40:45,001 --> 01:40:48,001
What's the first responder
network authority or first

1339
01:40:48,001 --> 01:40:50,001
net and what's your role in it?

1340
01:40:50,001 --> 01:40:57,001
I don't have any specific role in it.
It is a network that uses spectrum

1341
01:40:57,001 --> 01:41:00,000
that was provided by the FCC.

1342
01:41:00,001 --> 01:41:06,001
It is a network that is managed by
the federal government, the National

1343
01:41:06,001 --> 01:41:09,000
Information and Telecommunications Association,

1344
01:41:09,001 --> 01:41:11,001
NTIA, part of the Department of Commerce.

1345
01:41:11,001 --> 01:41:16,001
It is a broadband nationwide
network for first responders.

1346
01:41:18,000 --> 01:41:25,000
And the only thing that I have to do
with it at all is I'm also chairman of

1347
01:41:25,000 --> 01:41:30,001
the National Public Safety Telecommunications
Council, which is a group of public

1348
01:41:30,001 --> 01:41:32,001
safety trade associations.

1349
01:41:32,001 --> 01:41:38,001
It's an informal federation of these
that come together and help to develop

1350
01:41:38,001 --> 01:41:45,000
standards for public safety communications,
both technical and operational.

1351
01:41:46,000 --> 01:41:52,001
And to that extent, that organization has
provided quite a lot of input into the

1352
01:41:52,001 --> 01:41:58,001
development of first net, again,
both in terms of technical operation and in

1353
01:41:58,001 --> 01:42:04,001
terms of the policies,
how the network gets implemented.

1354
01:42:05,000 --> 01:42:10,001
It's strictly advisory. It's not a part
of first net. It's strictly advisory to

1355
01:42:10,001 --> 01:42:13,001
first net,
which first net can choose to follow or not.

1356
01:42:14,000 --> 01:42:18,000
Is first net actually deployed across America?
I mean, is there really

1357
01:42:18,000 --> 01:42:19,001
a nationwide network?

1358
01:42:19,001 --> 01:42:24,001
There is. The first net issued a contract to AT

1359
01:42:24,001 --> 01:42:26,001
&T to build the network.

1360
01:42:27,001 --> 01:42:34,000
And AT&T has built out the network nationwide,
although there are still major

1361
01:42:34,000 --> 01:42:37,001
gaps where it's not available.

1362
01:42:37,001 --> 01:42:44,000
Interestingly, the area where I live,
AT&T service is basically non

1363
01:42:44,000 --> 01:42:50,000
-existent,
but it's still a work in progress and

1364
01:42:50,000 --> 01:42:51,001
they are going to build it out.

1365
01:42:51,001 --> 01:42:55,001
And it is going to serve the
first responders nationwide, but

1366
01:42:55,001 --> 01:42:57,001
it's not totally built out yet.

1367
01:42:58,000 --> 01:43:03,001
But there's certainly a lot of it
that is built out across the country.

1368
01:43:03,001 --> 01:43:08,001
Does that mean that there are first net
handsets that are used on this network?

1369
01:43:09,000 --> 01:43:12,001
There are.
I can't get too deeply into this because I'm

1370
01:43:12,001 --> 01:43:14,000
truly not involved in first net.

1371
01:43:14,000 --> 01:43:20,000
So I can't really talk in terms
of specific equipment at all.

1372
01:43:20,001 --> 01:43:27,000
There's supposed to be a variety of equipment
that meets the common air interface

1373
01:43:27,000 --> 01:43:29,001
requirements of the first net system.

1374
01:43:29,001 --> 01:43:35,000
But I cannot tell you what's actually out
there that people are using, although I

1375
01:43:35,000 --> 01:43:38,001
do know that the system is
deployed and people are using it.

1376
01:43:39,000 --> 01:43:43,001
As a person who is involved in national
public safety issues, do you think that

1377
01:43:43,001 --> 01:43:47,001
public safety is missing its
simple VHF UHF channels?

1378
01:43:48,001 --> 01:43:52,001
Well, I think we have to step back and say,
what is the function of first net?

1379
01:43:53,000 --> 01:43:57,001
First net was intended to be a broadband
data network deployed nationwide.

1380
01:43:57,001 --> 01:44:04,000
It was never intended to replace the
traditional land mobile VHF and UHF systems.

1381
01:44:04,001 --> 01:44:10,001
Most of those are still in operation.
A number of them are expanding because

1382
01:44:10,001 --> 01:44:13,001
they are the last resort.

1383
01:44:14,001 --> 01:44:19,000
Most of them are hardened. Not all of
the first net facilities are hardened.

1384
01:44:19,000 --> 01:44:25,000
But most of the critical land mobile
systems that are used by public safety

1385
01:44:25,000 --> 01:44:28,001
are in sites that have backup generators.

1386
01:44:29,000 --> 01:44:35,000
They're in bunkers. And they continue to
operate under the worst of conditions.

1387
01:44:36,000 --> 01:44:42,000
That is simply not true of
the broadband networks.

1388
01:44:42,001 --> 01:44:47,001
They may or may not continue
to work in all situations.

1389
01:44:47,001 --> 01:44:53,000
So to suggest that public
safety has given up its VHF and

1390
01:44:53,000 --> 01:44:55,000
UHF, I think would be wrong.

1391
01:44:55,001 --> 01:44:58,001
They continue to use those and 800 megahertz.

1392
01:44:59,000 --> 01:45:05,001
And most localities would not be relying
on the first net network for their day

1393
01:45:05,001 --> 01:45:09,000
-to-day voice dispatch kinds of
communications at this point.

1394
01:45:09,001 --> 01:45:12,001
Maybe they will someday, but not today.

1395
01:45:12,001 --> 01:45:17,000
Do you think that the sophisticated
systems that public safety is now using

1396
01:45:17,000 --> 01:45:21,001
across America and across the world,
that they become so siloed that if there's a

1397
01:45:21,001 --> 01:45:25,000
fire burning between two cities,
they can't coordinate it because

1398
01:45:25,000 --> 01:45:27,000
they're talking on different channels?

1399
01:45:27,000 --> 01:45:30,000
I like to think we're just
the opposite of that.

1400
01:45:30,000 --> 01:45:36,001
When 9-11 happened,
there was a big concern that one

1401
01:45:36,001 --> 01:45:38,001
department couldn't talk to another.

1402
01:45:40,001 --> 01:45:45,001
Interoperability was a big problem.
And frankly, it wasn't a technical problem.

1403
01:45:46,000 --> 01:45:52,001
It was more a problem of a human
problem in that each entity really

1404
01:45:52,001 --> 01:45:56,001
didn't want others to be able
to listen to its conversations.

1405
01:45:56,001 --> 01:46:03,000
And so we had a silo system
that was very intense. 9-11

1406
01:46:03,000 --> 01:46:09,001
changed that to where more and more people,
one, got on

1407
01:46:09,001 --> 01:46:14,001
trunked systems in the 800 megahertz band
that allowed everyone to communicate.

1408
01:46:15,000 --> 01:46:21,000
And beyond that, even the VHF and UHF
systems started putting in gateways so that

1409
01:46:21,000 --> 01:46:22,001
one system could talk to another.

1410
01:46:22,001 --> 01:46:27,001
And then FirstNet came along,
which makes it possible for anybody that's on

1411
01:46:27,001 --> 01:46:30,001
FirstNet anywhere in the
country to communicate.

1412
01:46:31,000 --> 01:46:38,000
And so I like to believe,
and I really think it's true, that we have gone

1413
01:46:38,000 --> 01:46:44,000
much more to a situation where
every responder can talk to

1414
01:46:44,000 --> 01:46:46,000
everyone else they need to.

1415
01:46:46,000 --> 01:46:51,000
Did 9-11 change the approach by public
safety organizations away from channel

1416
01:46:51,000 --> 01:46:52,001
exclusivity and privacy?

1417
01:46:53,000 --> 01:47:00,000
Well, what it did is it made everybody
understand that communication

1418
01:47:00,000 --> 01:47:03,000
between agencies is critical.

1419
01:47:03,000 --> 01:47:09,001
And one of the big things that
NIPSTIC has done is-one of the things

1420
01:47:09,001 --> 01:47:16,001
that we found was people even had
radios that could talk to each other,

1421
01:47:17,000 --> 01:47:20,001
but they didn't know it because the
channels didn't have the same names.

1422
01:47:20,001 --> 01:47:25,001
And so one of the big things that
I think NIPSTIC has contributed to

1423
01:47:25,001 --> 01:47:32,000
interoperability is giving common channel
names to all of the public safety

1424
01:47:32,000 --> 01:47:38,001
channels so that if one entity wants to
talk to another, if they have the same

1425
01:47:38,001 --> 01:47:42,001
channel name in their radio,
they can both get on that channel and talk.

1426
01:47:44,000 --> 01:47:47,001
To not be able to talk because
you don't know you have the same

1427
01:47:47,001 --> 01:47:49,000
channel is just inexcusable.

1428
01:47:50,000 --> 01:47:55,000
So, I mean, that's just one of the things
that we've done that I think has really

1429
01:47:55,000 --> 01:47:57,000
helped interoperability in this country.

1430
01:47:57,001 --> 01:48:01,000
Are amateur radio operators
useful in emergency events?

1431
01:48:01,001 --> 01:48:02,001
[...]

1432
01:48:03,001 --> 01:48:10,001
And I encourage amateurs to work with
their local emergency management offices

1433
01:48:10,001 --> 01:48:17,001
to be part of the operation
because amateurs can also

1434
01:48:17,001 --> 01:48:20,001
communicate when other systems are down.

1435
01:48:20,001 --> 01:48:25,000
And they can provide essential
backup communications.

1436
01:48:25,001 --> 01:48:32,000
It's not police dispatch, but it's
providing information in an emergency back

1437
01:48:32,000 --> 01:48:36,000
to an emergency operations center
that's needed and necessary.

1438
01:48:36,000 --> 01:48:42,001
So I really encourage amateurs to work
with their emergency management agencies

1439
01:48:42,001 --> 01:48:46,000
as much as possible to be part of that team.

1440
01:48:46,000 --> 01:48:50,000
It's a little harder, I think, to get
that expertise out to the general public.

1441
01:48:50,001 --> 01:48:57,000
But if you're in an area and you've worked
with community leaders to say, hey,

1442
01:48:57,000 --> 01:48:59,001
we're a resource. We're here if you need us.

1443
01:48:59,001 --> 01:49:02,000
That's another way that
amateurs can get involved.

1444
01:49:02,001 --> 01:49:07,000
You are listening to an interview from
the QSO Today podcast with Ralph Haller,

1445
01:49:07,000 --> 01:49:10,001
N4RH, conducted by Eric Guth, 4Z1UG.

1446
01:49:10,001 --> 01:49:15,000
We thank Eric and the QSO Today podcast
for the use of their program here

1447
01:49:15,000 --> 01:49:16,001
on This Week in Amateur Radio.

1448
01:49:17,000 --> 01:49:21,000
We will be back with closing thoughts right
after we take this pause for stations

1449
01:49:21,000 --> 01:49:23,000
along our network to identify.

1450
01:49:23,001 --> 01:49:27,001
Serving the amateur radio community for
22 years and counting. You are listening

1451
01:49:27,001 --> 01:49:30,000
to This Week in Amateur Radio.

1452
01:49:50,000 --> 01:49:55,001
When you speak to amateur radio groups,
what perspective would you bring to the

1453
01:49:55,001 --> 01:49:57,001
amateur radio community that should be heard?

1454
01:49:57,001 --> 01:50:04,000
I think I try to have a
theme that amateur radio

1455
01:50:04,000 --> 01:50:07,000
can be lots of things to lots of people.

1456
01:50:08,000 --> 01:50:12,000
And if you want to get involved
in amateur radio, you should

1457
01:50:12,000 --> 01:50:13,001
take advantage of all of that.

1458
01:50:14,001 --> 01:50:21,000
And whether it is improving your technical
skills, improving your communication

1459
01:50:21,000 --> 01:50:26,001
skills, improving your public service skills.

1460
01:50:26,001 --> 01:50:32,000
Any of those things, amateur radio
provides an outlet that you can do that.

1461
01:50:32,000 --> 01:50:37,000
It's an outlet that allows people to learn.
It allows people to grow.

1462
01:50:37,001 --> 01:50:42,001
And it allows interaction with
others that have similar interests.

1463
01:50:43,000 --> 01:50:49,000
So my basic theme is that amateur
radio has not outlived its usefulness.

1464
01:50:50,000 --> 01:50:54,000
It's different than it was 50
years ago or 20 years ago.

1465
01:50:54,000 --> 01:50:58,001
It involves other technologies
like the Internet today.

1466
01:50:59,000 --> 01:51:06,000
But it's still an opportunity
for people with a desire of

1467
01:51:06,000 --> 01:51:10,001
technical knowledge to be able
to get together with others to

1468
01:51:10,001 --> 01:51:12,001
learn and to mentor.

1469
01:51:13,001 --> 01:51:17,001
So I guess that's primarily what I
talk about other than talking about

1470
01:51:17,001 --> 01:51:19,000
my experiences at the FCC.

1471
01:51:19,001 --> 01:51:26,000
The theme that I want people to understand
is amateur radio is still viable.

1472
01:51:26,001 --> 01:51:33,001
It's still a very wonderful
way to expand one's horizon.

1473
01:51:34,000 --> 01:51:37,001
Ralph, I want to thank you so much for
joining me on the QSO Today podcast.

1474
01:51:38,000 --> 01:51:41,000
Well, thank you for having me.
I've enjoyed this. The time

1475
01:51:41,000 --> 01:51:43,000
has gone by very fast for me.

1476
01:51:43,000 --> 01:51:45,000
I hope it will for your listeners as well.

1477
01:51:45,000 --> 01:51:49,001
I really appreciate the opportunity to
share some of my experiences with your

1478
01:51:49,001 --> 01:51:51,001
listeners. So thank you. 73.

1479
01:51:53,000 --> 01:51:59,000
AMSAT reports that it's continuing to
assess the status of the RAD-FXSAT-2 Fox 1E

1480
01:51:59,000 --> 01:52:04,000
Amateur Radio Cube Set after Ham and Nevada
reported hearing his CW signal weekly

1481
01:52:04,000 --> 01:52:08,000
via the spacecraft's transponder on January 27.

1482
01:52:09,000 --> 01:52:13,000
AMSAT Engineering and Operations was
able to confirm the reports from Brad

1483
01:52:13,000 --> 01:52:20,000
Schumacher, W5SAT, and determine that
RAD-FXSAT-2 is partially functioning,

1484
01:52:20,001 --> 01:52:23,000
although signals are extremely weak.

1485
01:52:23,001 --> 01:52:27,000
We also appreciate those who joined in
determining whether they could detect

1486
01:52:27,000 --> 01:52:32,000
their own or other signals in
recent passes today, AMSAT said in

1487
01:52:32,000 --> 01:52:33,001
a January 28 bulletin.

1488
01:52:33,001 --> 01:52:38,000
Please do not attempt to transmit through
the transponder until further notice.

1489
01:52:38,001 --> 01:52:42,000
This is very important to the
next steps we are taking now.

1490
01:52:42,001 --> 01:52:49,000
The next crucial step in evaluating the
condition of RAD-FXSAT-2 is to determine

1491
01:52:49,000 --> 01:52:55,001
whether or not the 1200 BPS-BPSK
telemetry beacon is operating and, if

1492
01:52:55,001 --> 01:52:58,000
possible, to copy telemetry from the beacon.

1493
01:52:59,000 --> 01:53:05,000
AMSAT continues to ask that those with 70
cm receive capability to listen on the

1494
01:53:05,000 --> 01:53:10,001
beacon frequency of 435.750 MHz plus or minus

1495
01:53:10,001 --> 01:53:12,000
Doppler upper sideband.

1496
01:53:12,001 --> 01:53:18,000
Use the Fox telem to capture any telemetry
and set Fox telem to upload to server

1497
01:53:18,000 --> 01:53:21,000
so that AMSAT will receive the telemetry data.

1498
01:53:48,000 --> 01:53:50,001
Recordings are welcome with
a detailed description.

1499
01:53:51,001 --> 01:53:57,000
We thank the amateur satellite community
for their perseverance and assistance

1500
01:53:57,000 --> 01:54:02,000
while the AMSAT engineering and operations
teams work to understand and resolve

1501
01:54:02,000 --> 01:54:07,000
the situation with RAD-FXSAT-2, AMSAT said.

1502
01:54:07,000 --> 01:54:13,000
YouTube recordings and PDF files from
the 2021 Propagation Summit hosted on

1503
01:54:13,000 --> 01:54:16,000
January 23 by Contest
University are now available.

1504
01:54:17,000 --> 01:54:21,000
More than a thousand logged in for the
sessions. Each presentation begins on the

1505
01:54:21,000 --> 01:54:25,000
hour. You can advance the video to
the presentation you wish to view.

1506
01:54:25,000 --> 01:54:30,001
The 11 a.m. session update on the Personal
Space Weather Station project and HAM

1507
01:54:30,001 --> 01:54:37,000
SCI activities for 2021 hosted by Dr.
Nathaniel Frizzell W2NAF.

1508
01:54:37,001 --> 01:54:43,000
The 12 noon session entitled Solar Cycle
25 Predictions in Progress hosted by

1509
01:54:43,000 --> 01:54:45,001
Carl Lutzenchwab, K9LA.

1510
01:54:46,001 --> 01:54:51,001
The 1 p.m. session called Maximizing
Performance of HF Antennas with Irregular

1511
01:54:51,001 --> 01:54:56,000
Terrain hosted by Jim Braichall, WA3FTT.

1512
01:54:56,001 --> 01:55:01,000
And the 2 p.m. session entitled HF Propagation,
What to Expect During the Rising

1513
01:55:01,000 --> 01:55:07,000
Years of Solar Cycle 25 hosted
by Frank Donovan, W3LPL.

1514
01:55:08,000 --> 01:55:11,001
Slide decks are available for each
presentation in the PDF format.

1515
01:55:11,001 --> 01:55:14,001
The French Defense Ministry is
in search for radio jammers

1516
01:55:14,001 --> 01:55:16,000
that can be drone mounted.

1517
01:55:16,001 --> 01:55:21,000
The government's Defense Innovation Agency
has put out a request for proposals in

1518
01:55:21,000 --> 01:55:25,000
search of a small low power warfare
device that can find radio communication

1519
01:55:25,000 --> 01:55:30,000
transmitters while mounted on a fixed or
rotary winged drone and possibly disable

1520
01:55:30,000 --> 01:55:32,000
the signals through jamming.

1521
01:55:32,000 --> 01:55:36,000
Proposals were due no later than the
18th of January and demonstrations of

1522
01:55:36,000 --> 01:55:39,000
prototypes will follow over the
course of the next seven months.

1523
01:55:39,000 --> 01:55:43,001
The devices are expected to be capable
of detecting any number of transmitters

1524
01:55:43,001 --> 01:55:49,001
operating between 30 MHz and 6 GHz and
available to transmit their findings in

1525
01:55:49,001 --> 01:55:52,000
real time to a receiving station on the ground.

1526
01:55:53,000 --> 01:55:56,000
Bidding is being limited to
companies within the European Union.

1527
01:55:56,001 --> 01:56:02,001
During 2020, a project between AMSAT UK,
AMSAT NL and Swiss universities got

1528
01:56:02,001 --> 01:56:07,000
underway with the aim of equipping two
Swiss satellites for now under the CHESS

1529
01:56:07,000 --> 01:56:09,001
name with linear amateur radio transponders.

1530
01:56:10,000 --> 01:56:15,000
Linear transponders permit several
CW or SSB contacts to take place

1531
01:56:15,000 --> 01:56:17,001
simultaneously within a prescribed passband.

1532
01:56:18,000 --> 01:56:20,000
The satellites also include features for

1533
01:56:20,000 --> 01:56:22,000
classroom demonstrations and experiments.

1534
01:56:22,000 --> 01:56:27,000
The CHESS, our constellation of High
Energy Swiss Satellites Project, includes

1535
01:56:27,000 --> 01:56:30,001
two satellites which will be
built simultaneously and later

1536
01:56:30,001 --> 01:56:32,000
launched as a constellation.

1537
01:56:32,001 --> 01:56:36,000
The main science objective is to
improve the understanding of the upper

1538
01:56:36,000 --> 01:56:40,001
atmosphere by in-situ measurements,
taking advantage of a constellation of

1539
01:56:40,001 --> 01:56:45,000
identical nano-satellites to study the
composition of the terrestrial atmosphere

1540
01:56:45,000 --> 01:56:47,001
and its density, the CHESS website explains.

1541
01:56:47,001 --> 01:56:52,001
The first satellite will have a nearly
circular orbit and an altitude of 400 km.

1542
01:56:53,000 --> 01:56:57,000
The second will have an elliptical orbit
with an altitude of anywhere between

1543
01:56:57,000 --> 01:56:59,001
350 and 1,000 km.

1544
01:57:00,000 --> 01:57:05,000
The amateur radio payload is a joint
project of AMSAT UK and AMSAT NL. A

1545
01:57:05,000 --> 01:57:09,000
successful review of system requirements
was completed in December. Launch will

1546
01:57:09,000 --> 01:57:11,001
not take place until the
fourth quarter of 2022.

1547
01:57:11,001 --> 01:57:17,001
The Intrepid DX Group is seeking nominations
for the individual or group that

1548
01:57:17,001 --> 01:57:20,000
most display their Intrepid Spirit in 2020.

1549
01:57:21,000 --> 01:57:25,001
For the purposes of this award,
an Intrepid Spirit is bold, courageous,

1550
01:57:26,000 --> 01:57:31,001
dedicated, innovative, fearless, generous,
resolute, and visionary in their

1551
01:57:31,001 --> 01:57:34,000
approach to amateur radio,
the organization says.

1552
01:57:35,000 --> 01:57:39,000
We want to recognize those individuals
or groups that activated the rare and

1553
01:57:39,000 --> 01:57:44,000
difficult dangerous places in 2020
exhibiting an unshakable commitment to the

1554
01:57:44,000 --> 01:57:45,001
amateur radio DX community.

1555
01:57:46,001 --> 01:57:49,001
Deadline for the 2020
nominations is February 15.

1556
01:57:50,000 --> 01:57:55,000
Submit nominations via email
to intrepiddxgroups.com.

1557
01:57:55,000 --> 01:58:01,001
It is given in the memory of James McLaughlin,
W.A.2EWE Slant, T6AF.

1558
01:58:01,001 --> 01:58:06,001
James was a retired lieutenant colonel in
the U.S. Army. He was shot to death in

1559
01:58:06,001 --> 01:58:10,000
April 2011 while working as a
contractor for the U.S. government

1560
01:58:10,000 --> 01:58:12,000
in Kabul, Afghanistan.

1561
01:58:13,000 --> 01:58:17,001
The board of directors of the Intrepid DX
Group will evaluate the nominations and

1562
01:58:17,001 --> 01:58:20,000
the award will be presented in May 2021.

1563
01:58:20,000 --> 01:58:25,001
Now celebrating our 22nd year keeping the
amateur radio community informed, you

1564
01:58:25,001 --> 01:58:30,001
are listening to This Week in Amateur Radio,
available worldwide as a podcast

1565
01:58:30,001 --> 01:58:36,000
from our web at www.twir.net.

1566
01:58:56,001 --> 01:59:02,000
In the last three segments on the subject
of promoting Your Ham Radio Club's

1567
01:59:02,000 --> 01:59:06,000
event, we covered making a successful
public service announcement.

1568
01:59:06,001 --> 01:59:11,001
In this segment, we'll look into where to
send your PSA once it's ready to mail.

1569
01:59:11,001 --> 01:59:17,000
I'm always collecting addresses for local
media outlets. No matter how long I've

1570
01:59:17,000 --> 01:59:21,000
looked, I'm always finding new
places to get free advertising for

1571
01:59:21,000 --> 01:59:23,000
our local ham radio clubs.

1572
01:59:23,001 --> 01:59:29,001
In the library, or at most radio stations'
business offices, you can find a thick

1573
01:59:29,001 --> 01:59:33,001
paperback book called the M Street Directory.

1574
01:59:34,000 --> 01:59:37,001
This is a good reference for names,
fax numbers, and addresses of radio

1575
01:59:37,001 --> 01:59:39,001
stations in North America.

1576
01:59:39,001 --> 01:59:45,001
Most states have a broadcaster
association and books of addresses and

1577
01:59:45,001 --> 01:59:47,000
other contact information.

1578
01:59:47,001 --> 01:59:52,000
Engineering firms who provide technical
services to the broadcast industry also

1579
01:59:52,000 --> 01:59:57,000
keep these books and would no doubt
let you copy the pages to begin your

1580
01:59:57,000 --> 01:59:59,000
collection of local media outlets.

1581
01:59:59,000 --> 02:00:04,000
For your club's fundraising promotion,
I would suggest posting notes in grocery

1582
02:00:04,000 --> 02:00:09,000
stores, laundromats, schools' libraries,
the nearest National Weather Service

1583
02:00:09,000 --> 02:00:11,001
office, and neighborhood bulletin boards.

1584
02:00:11,001 --> 02:00:17,001
Mail copies of your PSA to all local
radio stations, TV stations, cable TV

1585
02:00:17,001 --> 02:00:23,001
offices, newspapers, technical vocational
schools, on-campus radio and TV

1586
02:00:23,001 --> 02:00:26,000
stations, and even the local Radio Shack store.

1587
02:00:26,000 --> 02:00:31,000
As an extra incentive, when you mail
your PSA to your local radio and TV

1588
02:00:31,000 --> 02:00:36,001
stations, include several complimentary
admission tickets for the station to use

1589
02:00:36,001 --> 02:00:39,001
as they see fit with no strings attached.

1590
02:00:40,000 --> 02:00:44,001
This both allows them to give them away
to listeners or offer them to station

1591
02:00:44,001 --> 02:00:49,001
staff who may also someday become
hams and join your ham radio club.

1592
02:00:49,001 --> 02:00:54,000
If your local radio station is truly active
in the community, you can invite them

1593
02:00:54,000 --> 02:00:56,001
to broadcast live from your
event if they want to.

1594
02:00:56,001 --> 02:01:00,001
They can do this with minimal cost and
equipment, sometimes requiring nothing

1595
02:01:00,001 --> 02:01:03,001
more than a cell phone and
a station logo on a banner.

1596
02:01:04,000 --> 02:01:07,001
So always be looking for new ways
to promote your club's fundraiser.

1597
02:01:07,001 --> 02:01:13,000
In my opinion, in today's computer-automated
world, the more you automate, the

1598
02:01:13,000 --> 02:01:17,000
more you mail, the more you collect addresses,
the easier and faster you can

1599
02:01:17,000 --> 02:01:21,001
promote next year's event over a period
of years with good record-keeping.

1600
02:01:22,000 --> 02:01:26,001
You can turn promotion to a matter of
updating last year's PSA, which is still

1601
02:01:26,001 --> 02:01:31,000
stored in your computer, with the correct date,
printing new flyers and PSAs, new

1602
02:01:31,000 --> 02:01:35,001
address labels, and within 30 minutes,
the entire effort can often be a few

1603
02:01:35,001 --> 02:01:37,001
keystrokes and mouse clicks to your computer.

1604
02:01:37,001 --> 02:01:43,001
This is Greg Stoddard reporting
for This Week in Amateur Radio.

1605
02:02:07,001 --> 02:02:11,000
[...] PSA reports things as snow depth
and ice accumulation to meteorologists

1606
02:02:11,000 --> 02:02:14,001
quickly and efficiently through
local repeater nets connected

1607
02:02:14,001 --> 02:02:16,001
to the Weather Services Office.

1608
02:02:17,001 --> 02:02:21,001
Christopher Strong, Warning Coordination
Meteorologist for the Baltimore

1609
02:02:21,001 --> 02:02:27,000
-Washington Weather Forecast Office, states,
Reports of snow and ice are vital to

1610
02:02:27,000 --> 02:02:29,000
keeping the forecast on track.

1611
02:02:29,001 --> 02:02:34,000
Automated reporting stations are great
at detailing temperatures, rainfall and

1612
02:02:34,000 --> 02:02:37,000
winds,
but do not report snow and ice accumulation.

1613
02:02:38,000 --> 02:02:43,000
So, spotter reports really help us see
how much is accumulating and match it up

1614
02:02:43,000 --> 02:02:46,000
with how much we expected through that time.

1615
02:02:46,000 --> 02:02:50,001
Reports from radio amateurs and other
spotters help the National Weather Service

1616
02:02:50,001 --> 02:02:55,000
save lives and property in the
community and minimize the impact of

1617
02:02:55,000 --> 02:02:56,001
severe weather on the public.

1618
02:02:57,000 --> 02:03:02,000
To find out more about becoming a Skywarn
spotter, please visit the Skywarn page

1619
02:03:02,000 --> 02:03:07,000
on the National Weather Service website
and click on the link to contact the

1620
02:03:07,000 --> 02:03:10,000
Warning Coordination
Meteorologist in your area.

1621
02:03:10,000 --> 02:03:16,000
What began in 1921 as the Radio Society
of Christchurch in New Zealand is now a

1622
02:03:16,000 --> 02:03:21,001
robust club of enthusiasts known as the
Christchurch Amateur Radio Club, ZL3AC.

1623
02:03:22,000 --> 02:03:27,001
The club has traveled a long road displaced
by earthquakes in 2010 and 2011, but

1624
02:03:27,001 --> 02:03:29,001
is now happily ensconced in Pendleton.

1625
02:03:29,001 --> 02:03:35,001
Members are marking the 100-year journey
by operating as ZL100RSC throughout

1626
02:03:35,001 --> 02:03:40,001
February and offering an informal award
to anyone who contacts the station on

1627
02:03:40,001 --> 02:03:45,000
VHF, UHF, HF,
or through digital voice reflectors,

1628
02:03:45,001 --> 02:03:48,000
repeaters, Earth and Earth and satellites.

1629
02:03:48,000 --> 02:03:54,000
For the award, Hams must contact ZL100RSC,
which is worth 25 points.

1630
02:03:55,000 --> 02:03:59,001
10 points may also be earned by
contacting the club station ZL3AC.

1631
02:04:00,001 --> 02:04:05,001
Individual Christchurch club members are
worth 5 points each. February 15 is a

1632
02:04:05,001 --> 02:04:10,000
bonus day. That's the 100th anniversary
of the club's first meeting and on that

1633
02:04:10,000 --> 02:04:12,001
day all points earned are being doubled.

1634
02:04:12,001 --> 02:04:19,000
For more details, visit the QRZ
page for ZL100RSC. That's Zululema

1635
02:04:19,000 --> 02:04:21,001
100, Romeo Sahara Charlie.

1636
02:04:43,000 --> 02:04:45,001
[...] working with ZL1AC for over a decade.

1637
02:04:46,001 --> 02:04:52,001
I have been working with
ZL1AC for over a decade

1638
02:04:52,001 --> 02:04:58,001
and I have been working with ZL1AC for

1639
02:04:58,001 --> 02:05:04,001
over a decade and I have
been working with ZL1AC for

1640
02:05:04,001 --> 02:05:09,000
over a decade.

1641
02:05:12,000 --> 02:05:18,000
Thank you for making it possible for me
to make 500 episodes, for welcoming me

1642
02:05:18,000 --> 02:05:22,001
into the community, for being a fellow amateur.
Thank you.

1643
02:05:23,001 --> 02:05:29,001
During the week I received an email from Sunil,
VictorUniform3ZuluAlphaNovember,

1644
02:05:30,000 --> 02:05:34,001
who shared with me something evocative
with the encouragement to bring it the

1645
02:05:34,001 --> 02:05:37,000
attention and appreciation it deserves.

1646
02:05:38,000 --> 02:05:43,000
By way of introduction,
on the 13th of June 2002, Ken,

1647
02:05:43,001 --> 02:05:49,001
Whiskey6NovemberKiloEcho, became a silent key.
Ken was an amateur,

1648
02:05:50,000 --> 02:05:51,001
an active one, by all accounts.

1649
02:05:52,000 --> 02:05:57,001
I never met Ken, but his activity list is
long and varied. Ken became interested

1650
02:05:57,001 --> 02:06:01,000
in ham radio as a teenager in the 1930s.

1651
02:06:01,000 --> 02:06:05,001
He was a long-time advocate of CW
and during World War II he taught

1652
02:06:05,001 --> 02:06:07,000
Morse code to Navy operators.

1653
02:06:08,000 --> 02:06:14,000
In 1975 he founded the Sherlock Holmes
Wireless Society and was editor of its

1654
02:06:14,000 --> 02:06:17,001
newsletter,
now called the Log of the Canonical Hamz.

1655
02:06:18,001 --> 02:06:25,000
He received his investiture from the Baker
Street Irregulars in 1981. Ken was an

1656
02:06:25,000 --> 02:06:29,000
early member of the International
Morse Preservation Society or FISTs.

1657
02:06:29,000 --> 02:06:35,000
He held number 0818. He was the president
of Chapter 2 of the Old Old-timers

1658
02:06:35,000 --> 02:06:37,001
Club, the OOTC for many years.

1659
02:06:38,001 --> 02:06:44,001
In addition to drawing cover art,
Ken also wrote lots. 7-3 Magazine features

1660
02:06:44,001 --> 02:06:50,000
plenty of Ken's articles with titles like
Inexpensive Vertical, Don't Bug Me Dad

1661
02:06:50,000 --> 02:06:52,000
and The DX Hunter.

1662
02:06:52,001 --> 02:06:57,001
Ken was also a poet, which brings us to
the way that I think is appropriate to

1663
02:06:57,001 --> 02:07:00,000
mark the 500th episode of this podcast.

1664
02:07:01,000 --> 02:07:05,001
I'm confident that you can relate to this
contribution by Ken to Amateur Radio,

1665
02:07:06,001 --> 02:07:12,000
published in volume 1,
number 3 of 7-3 Magazine in December 1960.

1666
02:07:13,001 --> 02:07:20,000
The Vagabond Ham by Ken Johnson,
Whiskey6NovemberKiloEcho, silent key A

1667
02:07:20,000 --> 02:07:25,001
vagabond's life is the life I live,
along with others ready to give, a friendly

1668
02:07:25,001 --> 02:07:30,000
laugh and a word of cheer to each
vagabond friend both far and near.

1669
02:07:31,000 --> 02:07:36,001
I travel the airwaves day or night,
to visit places I'll never sight, from the

1670
02:07:36,001 --> 02:07:40,001
rail of a ship or from a plane,
yet I'll visit them all again and again.

1671
02:07:41,001 --> 02:07:46,001
I never hear from a far-off land that my
pulse doesn't quicken, with careful hand

1672
02:07:46,001 --> 02:07:51,001
I tune my receiver and VFO dial to make
a new friend and chat for a while.

1673
02:07:53,000 --> 02:07:58,000
Africa, Asia, they're all quite near,
in as easy reach as my radio gear. With the

1674
02:07:58,000 --> 02:08:02,000
flip of a switch, the turn of a knob,
I can work a ZL, a friend named Bob.

1675
02:08:03,001 --> 02:08:08,000
There's an LU4, a fellow that's grand,
who's described to me his native land,

1676
02:08:08,000 --> 02:08:12,000
till I can hear the birds and
feel the breeze as it blows from

1677
02:08:12,000 --> 02:08:13,001
the slopes of the mighty Andes.

1678
02:08:14,001 --> 02:08:19,000
I learned of the surf and a coral strand,
the smell of hibiscus where palm trees

1679
02:08:19,000 --> 02:08:23,000
stand, near the tropical moons,
silver and bright, from an

1680
02:08:23,000 --> 02:08:25,000
FO8 that I worked one night.

1681
02:08:26,000 --> 02:08:31,000
I've thrilled to the tales of night-bird
screams, in the depths of the jungle

1682
02:08:31,000 --> 02:08:37,000
where death-laden streams, flown ye verdant
growth of browns and greens, from a

1683
02:08:37,000 --> 02:08:38,001
DU6 in the Philippines.

1684
02:08:40,000 --> 02:08:45,000
The moors of Scotland, a little French shrine,
German castles on the River Rhine,

1685
02:08:45,001 --> 02:08:49,000
of these things I've learned over the air,
without ever

1686
02:08:49,000 --> 02:08:50,001
leaving my ham-shack chair.

1687
02:08:51,001 --> 02:08:56,000
There's a KL7 on top of the world,
to whom the northern lights are a banner

1688
02:08:56,000 --> 02:09:00,001
unfurled, that sweeps across the arctic night,
makes the frozen

1689
02:09:00,001 --> 02:09:02,001
sky a thing of delight.

1690
02:09:03,001 --> 02:09:09,000
Tales of silver and gold and precious stones,
ancient temples and moulding bones,

1691
02:09:09,001 --> 02:09:15,000
where the natives, I'm told,
are tall and tan, by an XE3 down in Yucatan.

1692
02:09:16,000 --> 02:09:22,000
My vagabond trips over the air will take me,
well, just anywhere, where other

1693
02:09:22,000 --> 02:09:26,000
vagabonds and I will meet,
from a tropical isle to a city street.

1694
02:09:26,001 --> 02:09:31,001
My vagabonds life will continue, I know,
through the fabulous hobby of ham radio,

1695
02:09:32,000 --> 02:09:36,000
and one day, from out at the world's end,
we'll meet on the

1696
02:09:36,000 --> 02:09:38,000
air, my vagabond friend.

1697
02:09:39,000 --> 02:09:42,001
I'm on a Victor Kilo 6
Foxtrot Lima Alpha Bravo.

1698
02:09:42,001 --> 02:09:47,001
Originating from Albany, New York and
distributed worldwide, you are listening to

1699
02:09:47,001 --> 02:09:49,001
This Week in Amateur Radio.

1700
02:10:12,001 --> 02:10:16,001
[...] heard on This Week in Amateur
Radio have been provided by the American

1701
02:10:16,001 --> 02:10:23,000
Radio Relay League, the AWRL Letter,
the AWRL Audio News, the Southgate Amateur

1702
02:10:23,000 --> 02:10:29,000
Radio News Service, Southgate Vibes,
AMSAT, the Radio Amateurs of Canada, the

1703
02:10:29,000 --> 02:10:35,001
FCC, the Radio Society of Great Britain
and Ofcom, the SARL, the International

1704
02:10:35,001 --> 02:10:40,000
Amateur Radio Union, the Wireless
Institute of Australia, the Amateur Radio

1705
02:10:40,000 --> 02:10:44,000
Newsline, the International Telecommunication
Nations Union and various news

1706
02:10:44,000 --> 02:10:46,000
sources on the internet.

1707
02:10:46,001 --> 02:10:51,001
And finally, This Week, the popular
American TV show Last Man Standing is

1708
02:10:51,001 --> 02:10:53,001
preparing to go QRT.

1709
02:10:54,001 --> 02:10:58,001
When the show wraps up its final day of
shooting this spring, it's going to be

1710
02:10:58,001 --> 02:11:00,001
saying farewell, ham radio style.

1711
02:11:00,001 --> 02:11:05,001
The primetime show, which became a showcase
for amateur radio through its main

1712
02:11:05,001 --> 02:11:12,000
character Mike Baxter, KA0XTT,
is leaving the air after nine years, but

1713
02:11:12,000 --> 02:11:16,000
not before it first gets on
the air on the amateur bands.

1714
02:11:16,000 --> 02:11:22,001
Executive Producer John Momadio, AA6JA,
said that a big farewell special event

1715
02:11:22,001 --> 02:11:28,001
station is planned for KA6LMS between
March 14th and March 30th, the

1716
02:11:28,001 --> 02:11:30,001
last day of the show's production.

1717
02:11:31,000 --> 02:11:35,001
At that point, the mailing address of
the Last Man Standing Amateur Radio Club

1718
02:11:35,001 --> 02:11:42,000
will also change to 11684 Ventura Boulevard,
Suite 810, Studio

1719
02:11:42,000 --> 02:11:45,000
City, California, 91604.

1720
02:11:46,000 --> 02:11:51,000
The show grew even more popular after star
Tim Allen made things real by getting

1721
02:11:51,000 --> 02:11:54,001
the call sign KK6OTD.

1722
02:11:55,000 --> 02:11:59,000
It also features guest radio operators
on the set during meal breaks.

1723
02:11:59,001 --> 02:12:04,000
John went on to say that rather than have
it slip away silently, we should have

1724
02:12:04,000 --> 02:12:08,000
one more activation of KA6LMS now.

1725
02:12:08,000 --> 02:12:14,000
With operators from the Great South Bay
Amateur Radio Club, the K2H special event

1726
02:12:14,000 --> 02:12:19,000
station, and the 12 Days of Christmas,
the activation will give everyone a last

1727
02:12:19,000 --> 02:12:23,001
chance to work KA6LMS in an
ambitious special event.

1728
02:12:24,001 --> 02:12:30,001
Be listening on CW, SSB, D-Star, DMR, RIDI,

1729
02:12:31,000 --> 02:12:36,001
PSK, and FT8. Consider it one last
hurrah for Last Man Standing.

1730
02:12:36,001 --> 02:12:41,001
This week in Amateur Radio is heard on
nets and repeaters all across North

1731
02:12:41,001 --> 02:12:46,000
America, and around the world on great
repeater systems like our flagship

1732
02:12:46,000 --> 02:12:53,000
repeater K2RHI on 146.
940 MHz, serving the tri-cities

1733
02:12:53,000 --> 02:12:57,001
of New York State's Capital Region from
Mount Refinesque in Brunswick, New York.

1734
02:12:57,001 --> 02:13:01,000
This week in Amateur Radio is produced
by Community Video Associates

1735
02:13:01,000 --> 02:13:05,001
Incorporated. Now for the staff of This
Week in Amateur Radio, this is Jeff

1736
02:13:05,001 --> 02:13:09,000
Rauner, WV2AEQ, saying 73 until next week.

1737
02:13:09,001 --> 02:13:12,001
This week in Amateur Radio is
copyright Community Video Associates

1738
02:13:12,001 --> 02:13:14,001
Incorporated, all rights reserved.